This week, Environmental Health News editor Peter Dykstra and Bobby Bascomb go Beyond the Headlines to talk about how resource extraction is impacting Indigenous communities from the Amazon rainforest to the Sámi in Finland. And in the history calendar, Peter and Bobby remember two Brazilian environmental activists who were murdered in retaliation for their efforts to protect the Amazon rainforest.

With an historic SpaceX launch and several Mars missions underway, 2020 is proving a pivotal year for space exploration. Steve Curwood speaks with Greg Autry, Director of the Southern California Commercial Space Initiative at the University of Southern California, about how innovations in space technology such as solar charging stations that beam energy back down to Earth, and mining hard rock materials in space, could displace earth-bound activities that are hard on the environment.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, Earthjustice and 350.org are joining more than 1000 companies in pausing their advertising on Facebook in July as part of the “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign. Climate journalist Emily Atkin, who writes the newsletter HEATED, joins Steve Curwood to discuss why these groups are taking a stand against the spread of racism, white supremacy and climate disinformation on this giant social media platform.

The search for life elsewhere in the Universe is focused now on Mars, our closest planetary neighbor, with the Perseverance mission planned to launch sometime between the end of July and the middle of August. Astrobiologist Sarah Stewart Johnson is a Georgetown associate professor and NASA scientist who has spent her career searching for answers to these questions. Her book Sirens of Mars: Searching for Life on Another World captures the intersection between planetary science and her life's journey, and she joins Host Steve Curwood to explore the big questions that define space exploration and the human species’ fascination with Mars.

The field of wildlife tracking is getting a major upgrade thanks to a new initiative called ICARUS, which uses special equipment on the International Space Station to allow researchers to track much smaller species than ever before, including tiny migrating birds and even insects. Autumn-Lynn Harrison, Program Manager of the Migratory Connectivity Project at Smithsonian Institution, joins Bobby Bascomb to discuss how the new technology works and will aid conservation efforts.