Dr.

Bell goes to Washington, this week on planetary Radio. Radio. Welcome to the Travel Show that takes you to the Final Frontier.

I'm at Kaplan of the Planetary Society. Planetary Scientist Jim Bell testified before the House of Representatives

Subcommittee on Space last week.

We'll get his report.

Bill Nye says the 2020 Mars rover must put sample collection and caching first.

And Bruce Betts will introduce us to the little people on a moon of Uranus.

Emily Lochuala is first into the pool with intriguing news from the Mars Science Laboratory up there on the red planet.

All right, Emily, here is the question you're apparently getting from everybody, and now you can have it from me.

Has Curiosity reached Mount Sharp? from everybody and now you can have it from me.

Has curiosity reached Mount Sharp or not?

Well, it depends on what your definition of Mount Sharp is.

Which doesn't seem like it should be that complicated.

I mean, it's a mountain, right?

We're looking at the mountain. Have we gotten to the mountain? And the answer is, no, we have not gotten to the spot where the mountain slope changes from the plains.

But that's never really what the curiosity science team meant when they talked about getting to Mount Sharp.

Getting to Mount Sharp has always been a shorthand for getting to the kinds of rocks that Curiosity

landed in Gale Crater to explore, which were these very ancient rocks, many of which contain clays and

sulfates, that record this long history of the climate and environment inside Gail Crater on Mars.

And Curiosity has finally reached the very first of those layers

in an area called Perump Hills,

which is located still kind of far away

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