Counting down, as dark, near its destiny, this week on Planetary Radio.

Welcome. I'm at Kaplan of the Planetary Society with more of the human adventure

across our solar system and beyond.

The double asteroid redirection test spacecraft will meet its spectacular doom

on September 26, when it slams into asteroid demorphos.

With less than a week to go, we'll check in again with dark coordination lead, Nancy Shabo.

We'll also meet the program manager for Leechia Cube, the tiny Italian CubeSat

that will attempt to capture images of the impact and its aftermath.

And in moments, we'll hear highlights of a September 19 briefing at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab

that announced exciting finds by Perseverance, the Mars 2020 rover.

As it rolls across the red planet, we inch closer to evidence of past life up there.

Turns out the Artemis-1 Orion capsule has a lot more passengers than I knew about,

will explain when Bruce and I answer the latest space trivia quiz.

I'm in Tucson, Arizona, as this week's show is published.

NASA's innovative, advanced concepts program, that's NIAC,

has once again invited me to host the live webcast of its annual Symposium.

It's something I love doing.

I get to spend two and a half days talking with engineers, scientists, and other space nerds

who've come up with scores of fascinating projects.

Solar sales, buildings grown from fungi, finding earth-like worlds, novel ways to defend our planet,

and kilometer-wide structures in space launched by a single rocket.

So many more. It's heaven for this technology.

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