A year of roving the red planet this week on planetary radio. I everyone and welcome back to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan. We're celebrating a

remarkable anniversary. Mars Rover's spirit bounced down to Mars on January 3rd

2004. We'll talk about a year of excitement and discoveries with Mars Exploration Rover Principal

Investigators Steve Squires and Project Manager Jim Ericsson.

First though, here are a few headlines from around our solar system.

The Huygens probe remains on track for descent into the thick atmosphere of Saturn's Moon Titan

on January 14.

Meanwhile, Cassini has taken some spectacular close-ups of IAPITUS.

You can see them at planetary.org.

Deep Impact is almost ready for a launch that will send it hurtling toward a violent encounter

with a comet on the 4th of July. We'll have more about that mission on next week's show.

And speaking of violent encounters, NASA reports that we won't be having one with an asteroid called 2004

MN4.

Further research has set aside fear of a 2029 collision with the 1300 foot long near-Earth object.

There's much more to come on planetary radio, including Bruce Betts and a new trivia contest.

I'll be back with Steve Squires right after Emily takes us to

the stars.

Hi, I'm Emily Loch Duwala with questions and answers.

A listener asked, what is the most distant object from the Earth that was built by humans?

The Voyager 1 spacecraft is the human-made object that is most distant from her birthplace.

Each year she adds a third of a billion kilometers to her distance from the Earth.

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