It's night on Planetary Radio.

Welcome to the Travel Show that takes you to the

travel show that takes you to the Final Frontier.

I'm at Kaplan of the Planetary Society with the first of two shows from the Yuri's Night

Los Angeles Celebration, one that came three days early this year.

We'll talk with two of the so-called ambassadors at that amazing party

under Space Shuttle Endeavor.

Star Trek's Robert Picardo, who is now one of my colleagues at the Society, and a very special conversation

with Italian astronaut Samantha Christopheretti, who returned from the International Space Station

last June.

Bill Nye has the week off while he is at the annual Space

Symposium in Colorado. I'll be joining him there right after I finish

assembling this week's show but Bruce Betts is here and so is the Planetary Society's senior editor, Emily Lockdawala.

Emily, we're a little bit late, but not too late to talk about your latest what's up

around the solar system. More than 20 spacecraft from nations all over this world exploring other worlds in our solar neighborhood.

And I marvel at the fact that seven of those, seven active spacecraft just at Mars.

Mars is a very busy place right now with five orbiters and two rovers.

Both rovers exploring Mars's most ancient rocks, Clayrich rocks. Curiosity is just about to finish crossing the

Nachliffed Plateau on its way to the Murray Butts. That mission is having lots of adventures,

as is opportunity, which did some really scary

hill climbing last month and unfortunately didn't quite manage to get to the peak of the

hill where it was trying to reach some really tasty-looking rocks but they have

...