You are the only human being on a vast and deadly planet.

Frightened?

Then you're ready for this week's planetary radio.

Welcome to this week Show that takes you to the Final Frontier.

I'm at Kaplan of the Planetary Society.

More about that scary Halloween version of our theme later in the show.

What I'm even more excited about is my conversation with the author of The Martian, Andy Weir.

Bill Nye is on the road this week after joining us for a very joyous

celebration of the Planetary Society's 35th anniversary. Bruce Betts was also part

of that celebration. We'll hear his preview of the night sky and get another

space trivia contest underway with What's Up. Let's join Emily Lachto-Wala out beyond Mars

in the vast reaches of the asteroid belt.

Emily, as we all recover from that glorious 35th anniversary celebration,

there is news from series.

Tell us about these new images well these images are not actually

new but they're new to the public and this is how things work on on all mass

emissions all mass emissions return images which are science data from the mission,

and the scientists have some time to examine the images, make sure they're all complete,

make sure the spacecraft doesn't need to send any other data to make them complete.

They calibrate them, they make sure that the data are perfect, and then after this period of

data check out is over, which usually lasts about three to twelve months, they send all of the data to something called the planetary data system.

And once the data is in the planetary data system, anybody in the world can use that data to do whatever

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