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Astronomycast, episode 257 from Monday, March 19, 2012. Biking Orbiter.

Welcome to Astronomycast, our weekly facts-based journey through the cosmos, where we help you understand not only what we know, but how we know what we know.

My name is Fraser Cane, I'm the publisher of University Day, and with me is Dr. Pamela Gaye, a professor at Southern Illinois University at Evansville.

Pamela, how are you doing?

I'm doing well. How are you doing, Fraser?

Doing really well. We had a bit of a delay. I apologize to everybody, but you were on a crazy conference.

I was, so last week, I was at the Lunar and Planetary Sciences Conference down in the Woodlands, Texas, otherwise known as a rich part of Houston.

And I was catching up on all that's new and amazing in space science, and I was reminded that we started almost 50 years ago from this recording.

It was actually in April that it happened. We started putting spacecraft past other planets, 50 years ago, April 2012.

So doing this show makes perfect sense.

And I would say that conference is one of the biggest news generators of the entire year.

We are still digesting the news that poured out of that conference, and there's some really interesting things that came out of it.

So, yeah, I know Nancy. Nancy's got a list of articles that she's planning to write that's on long.

Yeah, Emily does too. So check out Universe Today Planetary Society blog, and I have a far smaller number, but long stories on StarStrader.com.

That's great. All right. Let's kick on then.

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