counting down to Jupiter this week on planetary radio.

Welcome, I'm Matt Kaplan, at the Planetary Society, with more of a human adventure in our

solar system and beyond.

And yes, that's the first time we've opened with that line.

Another mission leader joins us this week as he prepares

for the arrival of his spacecraft at the King of planets. We'll talk with Principal

investigator Scott Bolton about Juno and Jupiter.

Bill Nye prepares us for that conversation as only the science guy can and we'll check in with

director of space policy Casey Dreyer at Politicon. Senior editor Emily Lachdwala gets us rolling with her report

about a mission to one of the nearest yet most mysterious locations in our solar neighborhood.

Emily, you've now written about this next mission that China is planning to land on the moon

and rove around a little bit. Tell us about it.

Well, we're talking about Chung of four 4 which is based on the backup spacecraft of the mission that became Changa 3.

They've done this with their previous missions. Basically they build two spacecraft they launch one and

if the first one achieves its goals which both

Chang'1 and Chang'a 3 did then they launch the backup one is a slightly more

ambitious mission and that's what's happening with Chang' 4.

Is this one going to that mysterious still somewhat mysterious side of the moon that we can't see?

Yes, this one is going to be the world's very first farside lunar lander which is pretty amazing and in order to make that work of course because the moon keeps that side of it facing away from Earth at all times there isn't an easy way to communicate with the spacecraft that's back there.

So they're actually going to have to launch an orbiter mission, a

mission that will journey to the Earth Moon L2 point, kind of this gravitational balance point

along the far side of the Moon, to serve as a communications relay and then six months

...