Back to Mercury with Sean Solomon 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. The Messenger Spacecraft is on

course to orbit our solar system's innermost planet. We'll spend time once again

with the leader of that mission.

We've also got the entire cast of regulars this week,

except that one of the players begins a new role.

Emily Lockwala, the Planetary Society Science and Technology Coordinator, will join me in a few seconds

for the first of our weekly conversations about what's new in planetary science.

Bill Nye has news of plans for a human mission to an asteroid, and Bruce Betts will be

along with a look at the night sky.

First, let's get Emily on the Skype connection.

Welcome, and I'm looking forward to these conversations.

Yeah, me too. The people have spoken and they want me to just have a conversation with you.

They certainly did and it was pretty much unanimous as well.

So let's start with something that you featured on the website

and I only just watched it a few minutes ago. It is one of the prettiest little

fanciful animations I've ever seen. Yeah you you know, I get suggestions quite frequently to go check out this animation.

I don't usually have very high expectations, but this animation is showing what the sky would look like

from the surface of Earth, if Earth had Saturn's rings was just spectacular.

He really did a terrific job and it was smart picking Ave Maria behind it as well.

Yeah, the music's nice too.

So you get to see from different spots on Earth and apparently very

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