Celebrating the International Year of Astronomy with Pamela Gay, this week on

Planetary Radio. Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final

frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. The International Astronomy

community has just marked the end of a very special year. We'll talk with Astronomer and Astronomy cast co-host Pamela Gay about the IYA and how it lives on in 2010.

Bill Nye, the science and planetary guy, is back and he'll somehow go from the search for extraterrestrial

intelligence to buying your own space shuttle in his commentary. Bruce Betts

includes news of an eclipse in his what's up review of the night sky and we'll get all this

underway with Emily Lochuwala's look back at highlights from the Planetary

Society blog. Emily welcome back we're going to get to a very significant anniversary in the history of solar system exploration but first

You pointed out in the blog last week that news of the not demise of spirit but the immobility of spirit may have been

somewhat exaggerated. Yeah by me and I apologize for that I had was under the

mistaken impression that JPL had halted extrication efforts.

That is not true.

They are still working on getting spirit out,

at least as of this conversation.

And they may yet decide to quit extrication efforts for the winter,

but that hasn't happened yet.

All right, well we'll wish them luck and you have continuing coverage on the blog, even a little

movie of one of these attempts, ongoing attempts for Spirit.

On to that anniversary now.

In particular, the work of a fellow who I guess you've been following for some time, who has

...