The Discussion: Paul and Jen packed out the Star Stage at this year’s Big Bang Fair in Birmingham as Sirius Astronomy ran experiments to explain how rockets and space suits work and how space capsules protect astronauts from the heat of re-entry. Jen updates us on her astronomy research trip to South Africa next month and Ralph reviews the latest space-based sci-fi thriller, Life.

The News: Rounding up the space and astronomy news this month we have:

• A schoolboy who spotted an error in NASA data
• Are the Van Allen radiation belts weaker than always thought?
• Was Earth’s atmosphere like Titan’s 2.4 billion years ago?
• Using the sun as a gravitational lens
• NASA’s heading for Mars & evidence of an ancient Mars tsunami

The Interview: This month we have a couple of interviews with the children taking part in science challenges at the Big Bang Fair and clips of Paul & Jen creating fire hazards and projectiles around an undefended audience…

Hat of Woo: Following your comments by email and online, we’re bringing back the vile and rancid Hat of Woo this month. And we’re back with a festering sore of a conspiracy theory in the form of Immanuel Velikovsky’s laws of physics defying Worlds in Collision ‘theory’.