In the beginning, looking back to the big bang with Brian Keating, 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.

Professor Keating directs the Simon's Observatory, now under construction in Chile's Atacama region,

a top of more than 5,000 meter mountain.

He is also the author of Losing the Nobel Prize, his highly recommended, often very personal tale about much more than reform of the Nobel Prize for Physics.

You'll hear our delightful conversation after headlines from the downlink and after we check in with Bruce Petz for a rare upfront edition of What's Up.

I'm sure you've heard by now that NASA has selected two discovery class missions.

Veritas and DaVinci Plus will both orbit Venus late this decade, if all goes well.

The story tops our downlink headlines and my colleague Ray Paletta has written a very fine article about the missions and our hot twin.

You'll find both at planetary.org.

If you caught the June 4th space policy edition, you heard Casey Dreyer and me talking about the Biden White House's budget request that includes nearly $25 billion for NASA.

That's a very welcome, almost 7% increase.

Also in the June 4th downlink is news about Canada's new investments in space science and exploration, including the nation's role in the Artemis Lunar Exploration Program.

And up on Mars, ingenuity had a slightly close call during its sixth flight.

The glitch confused the little rotor craft's autonomous flight control system.

Thank goodness it was able to safely land about five meters short of its intended destination.

These stories and more are at planetary.org.

It is time to talk to the chief scientist of the planetary society. That's Bruce Petz. Nice to be talking to you upfront. We don't do this very often.

It feels so fresh and new.

Yeah, well, it's just, you know, there are people I've heard there are one or two who may not stick always stick around long enough to hear what's up.

So now they'll know what they're missing.

Wow, you never told me that before.

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