Organ chips on their way to the moon and a sun-grazing comet just days from

Perihelian. This week on Planetary Radio.

I'm Sarah al-Ahmed of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar

system and beyond.

This may well be the week that humans leave Earth orbit for the first time in half a century,

but we won't know until the moment that Artemis II takes to the sky.

Lisa Carnell, who's the director of NASA's Biological and Physical Sciences Division,

joins us to talk about Avatar. It's an experiment

flying on Artemis II that uses tiny chips grown from astronaut cells to study how deep space

affects human biology. And then Alain Mori, who's an astronomer and founder of the map

survey in Chile, discusses the sun-grazing comet his team discovered earlier this year. And what might

happen when it passes within 162,000 kilometers of the sun on April 4th? Then Bruce Betts, our chief

scientist at the Planetary Society, joins me for What's Up to let you know how you can

observe this upcoming comet. That is, if it survives its close past by the sun.

If you love planetary radio, I want to stand informed about the latest space discoveries,

make sure you hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcasting platform. By subscribing,

you'll never miss an episode filled with new and awe-inspiring ways to know the cosmos and our

place within it.

On April 1st, 2026, Artemis 2 enters its next set of launch windows.

This is the moment that NASA has been building toward for years, the first crude lunar mission since Apollo 17 more than 50 years ago.

Whether the crew is already lifted off or launch day is still

ahead of them by the time you hear this, one thing is definitely certain. The science that's

...