A Mars Rover update this week on planetary radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. Time to check in with Spirit and

Opportunity, nearly five and a half years and they are still trekking across the Red

Planet. We'll get a report on the twin rovers from Project Scientist Bruce Banner of JPL.

Bill Nye has something old and something new to talk about today, and Bruce Betts is back from Spain with lots to tell us about the night sky.

Emily Lachowala has the week off from Q&A.

You may have noticed that Emily is also taking a break from the Planetary Society blog at planetary.org.

Some great folks have been filling in, including our own Bruce Betts.

The Society's Director of Projects has completed his reporting from Granada, Spain, where

he attended and presented at the Planetary Defense Conference.

Bruce will tell us more about his trip during what's up.

You can also turn to the blog for the latest on the Dawn mission to the Solar System's two largest

asteroids.

Mark Raymond is project system engineer for Dawn. He takes us deep inside mission operations

with the fascinating and somewhat harrowing tale of a major software upgrade. Are you a bit intimidated when you upgrade your computer's

operating system? Try doing it when your machine is more than 300 million

kilometers from home. All went well and Dawn is preparing for the

transition from coasting back to ion engine-powered flight in June.

It's a go for liftoff of Space Shuttle Atlantis on May 11, setting out for the fifth and final

Hubble Space Telescope repair mission. Here's Bill.

Hey, Bill Nye, the Planetary Guy here, Vice President of the Planetary Society, and this week I want to talk

about the old and the new. People are still very concerned that the space shuttle is going to be retired and then the United States

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