For the last time Godspeed Atlantis this week on planetary radio. Radio. Timres 10, 9, 8, 7, 7, 6, 5, all 3

3 all 3 engines up and burning.

2, 1, 0, and lift off, the final lift off of Atlantis

on the shoulders of the space shuttle, America will continue the dream. Roger Roll, Atlantic. Houston now controlling the flight of Atlantis.

The space shuttle spreads its wings one final time for the start of a sentimental journey into history.

That's what happened on the morning of Friday, July 8.

Welcome to Public Radio's Travel Show that takes you to the Final Frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society.

The launch of Atlantis, the last launch ever of a space shuttle, was reason for deep

reflection and perhaps a bit of sadness, but it was also reason to celebrate 30 years of

amazing accomplishment.

That's what we'll do on today's show,

right after we hear from Emily Lochuwala,

followed by a passionate plea from Bill Nye.

Emily is the Planetary Society Science and Technology Coordinator.

Emily, good to have you back.

As usual to review some of the highlights of the Planetary Society blog.

Where shall we start this time with MSL?

I think so. There's quite a lot about MSL this week.

I opened up with Ryan Anderson who has guest blogged for me before and he actually has spent a lot of his young professional career researching one of the four possible landing sites for

MSL, Gail Crater, but that doesn't mean that he can't be objective about the possible four landing sites.

So I'm posting a long blog entry that he wrote,

...