Hello, Izzy here. Before we head off on a trip to Mars via standard calling, I need to make a

correction. A week after we recorded this, the plan to send a UK-assembled rover called Fetch

to Mars were binned. So there's a partial of this show that very quickly went out of date.

However, a sample return

mission will still go ahead, but it will be replaced by two American drones. It will make more

sense later, but for what it's worth, I think we should call them Fred and George. Anyway, enjoy the

show. If Mars did have water flowing on it in the past, where did it all go?

You can say, well, are we alone in the universe?

Let's be truly honest here, Robert. What is so special about Mars?

Hello and welcome to the Supermassive podcast from the Royal Astronomical Society,

live from Stand and Calling.

With me, science journalist Izzy Clark.

And me, astrophysicist, Dr. Becky Smedhurst.

This is a little bit different, to be honest, than what we normally do.

We're usually either in the very

you know quiet of the royal astronomical society library or more likely in the pandemic just in our

spare rooms with a microphone under a blanket trying to make some sort of studio but this

this is amazing it's so chill everyone sat on the grass we've even got dogs in the audience this

is the this is great.

We could learn a lot from this from our like podcast recording. I can get used to this.

We're also dangerously close to the PIMS bar, which...

Yeah, I could get dangerously. Also dangerous is that I've decided to wear white jeans today at a festival, which is potentially a bad choice.

...