Bill Noyes,

Noyes, Sophia Adventure, this week on planetary radio.

Welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the Final Frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society, and I lived a dream a couple of weeks ago.

Bill Nye and I made a TV show. Today you'll hear some of the audio from our visit to

Sophia, the huge infrared telescope mounted in a 747.

The very plane Bill worked on when he was a Boeing engineer.

Bruce Betts and I will tell you about a great Sophia related What's Up

Space Trivia Prize and we're just about to visit with Emily Lochuwala.

Emily, thanks for joining us as always and happy holidays. You've got another update on

Akatsky. You've told me that's the closest approximation to correct pronunciation

that you've been able to come up with.

Yeah, and unfortunately it's not very good news on the Japanese Venus Climate Orbiter, which of course failed to go into orbit last week.

Now they're doing some fault tree analysis.

They're trying to figure out what happened with the probe.

And a couple of the possible fault scenarios might mean that the engine

nozzle has actually fallen off.

So that would be very bad news.

That would be awful, wouldn't it?

Oh my goodness.

Well, they haven't given up hope, judging from the cartoon that some fan put up.

No, they and the Japanese public have certainly not given up hope.

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