A Mission to Earth This Week on Planetary Radio.

Welcome and Happy New Year.

I'm at Kaplan of the Planetary Society with more of the human adventure

across our solar system and beyond. By the time you hear this, Osiris Rex may be orbiting

no more than two kilometers from a messy mysterious asteroid called

Benu. The spacecraft is already revealing Benu's secrets, according to Vicky Hamilton.

This comes after the probe tried out its instruments

when it passed our own much bigger rock. Vicky is here to share much more with

us. This holiday edition of our show has also allowed me to head for the applied physics lab near

Baltimore where I'm covering the thrilling New Horizons fly by of Faraway Ultima Touli.

Don't worry, I still found time for our regular What's Up visit with Bruce Betts.

And we can now share a special greeting from someone else.

Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye.

Bill Nye. Bill, welcome back to the show, and happy new year.

I thought that you might want to share greetings

for this year that we have just begun 2019.

It is an amazing thing to me that there is such a thing as 2019.

Fascinating when I was a kid, the 21st century was this remote future.

But here we are, and on top of that,

we have continued to explore space

and learn more about the solar system

and our place within it, and so and so as we speak,

...