How's the air up there? Exoplanet atmospheres this week on planetary radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the Final Frontier.

I'm at Kaplan.

This week that final frontier is 63

light years away where water and methane have been found in the atmosphere of a

planet circling another star. Our guest is Mark Swain, leader of a team that has just announced

discovery of the first organic material on a so-called exoplanet. Bill Nye, the Science

Guy's commentary says we can start saving up for a ticket to

space while Emily Lockwala's Q&A explains why virtually every large object in space is round like a you head, as Columbus once told

Bugs Bunny.

We'll wrap up the show with Pluto plasma and edible space debris shared with our friend Bruce Betts who will share his and our view of

the night sky and a new space trivia question.

Mars is at the top of our headline review.

If you dig the Red Planet you'll probably

like the extensive report on Spirit and opportunity by my colleague AJS Rail.

It's at planetary.org. You'll learn that Spirit is weathering her third Martian winter in better than expected

fashion, while Opportunity continues to explore the vicinity of Victoria Crater.

And both rovers are safe from what appeared for a few days to be a major

budget challenge. By the way we expect Steve Squires, the Mars Exploration

Rover Principal investigator, to be our guest on next week's show.

Turning to Earth's other next-door neighbor, Emily Lachto-Wala's space blog, reports that the

European Space Agency's Venus Express is still looking for signs of volcanoes under the thick clouds of second

rock from the sun. That's at planetary.org as well, naturally.

...