Oh, Oh, Thank you. 726 looking back over the summer.

Welcome to Astronomy Cast our weekly facts-based journey through the Cosmos

where we help you understand not only what we know but how we know what we know.

I'm Fraser Kane, I'm the publisher of Universe today.

With me as always is Dr. Pamela Gay, a senior scientist for the Planetary Science Institute and the director of Cosmocost.

Hey Pamela, how you doing?

I am doing well and our show would be old enough to vote in this year's presidential

elections which is your reminder to make sure you are registered to vote no

matter what country you're in if it's a democracy make sure

you're registered and vote voting is important. So what 18 you're allowed to vote

when you're 18 in the US okay yeah can't drink until you're 21, but you're allowed to decide the fate of the nation at 18.

Right, yeah. Yeah, we're 18 here in Canada as well, and the 19 for drinking.

But... in Canada as well and then 19 for drinking. But we are over our summer hiatus. So we are back and so what did you do with your summer hiatus?

I went to a whole bunch of different astronomy things.

I went to San Diego on vacation and took pictures of guerrillas and boats and other things. and Yeah, and mostly I slowly deteriorated mentally as I watched what's happening to NASA's budget.

Oh, the cancellation of the Viper Mission led me to learn things that reminded me why I hate economics.

Yeah, the Viper Mission is an example of something that's really frustrating and yet those are the rules.

And I don't know if we're going to talk about this.

Was it cancelled during hiatus.

Yeah, yeah, okay. We'll talk about all right. We'll talk about this in the in the episode. Yeah and so for me, you know I did my regular stuff which was that I

I went into the forest and I cut down trees and I planted a bunch of stuff and observed

nature. I did a bunch of hikes this summer with my wife and it was great.

...