They are the hunters and trackers of thousands of potentially hazardous space rocks, and you'll meet them 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.

There's something about the University of Arizona and asteroids. I suppose it's no accident.

The great institution in Tucson is headquarters for several of our planet's most productive or promising projects designed to meet the challenge presented by near-earth objects.

I met the leaders of Space Watch and the Catalina Sky Survey when I visited the campus in September. You'll hear my conversations with these defenders of Earth in minutes.

Then we'll head out across the solar system with Bruce Bats and what's up, giving you another chance to win the coveted rubber asteroid.

That's no comment, or if it is who was created by us when the double asteroid redirection test spacecraft slammed into asteroid and moonlit dimorphos.

You should see the striking image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. You'll find it at the top of the October 14 edition of the Downlink, the Planetary Society's free weekly newsletter.

Okay, that long trail of debris does not mean we've made a comment, but it does tell us that we, little humans, now have the power to avoid the fate of the dinosaurs, which is a pretty good reason to light up the sky.

Another great image of a subject much, much further away has been snapped by the JWST. It's a young star surrounded by a dense disc of gas and dust, a disc that is very likely to have baby worlds forming within it.

Much as scientists believe our own solar system was formed four and a half billion years ago. It's like looking at our own genesis.

There's so much more waiting for you at planetary.org slash Downlink.

Here's a fun opportunity you might want to look into if you're hearing me in time. The Planetary Science Institute's CosmoQuest team, led by my friend Pamela Gay, is back with CosmoQuest a con.

The theme for this year's online gathering is rockin' with robots and rockets. It runs Friday through Sunday, October 21 to 23.

I'll be on a great science journalism panel Saturday at 2 p.m. 1800 UTC. You can learn more and get tickets at CosmoQuest.org.

Melissa Brucker is the University of Arizona Research Scientist who heads Space Watch. The first of the two survey projects we'll learn about today.

I was already in Tucson to host the NIAC Symposium webcast that you may have heard excerpts of in last week's show. It was a warm walk across the campus to the headquarters of the Lunar and Planetary Lab where I met Melissa in the Space Watch offices.

Melissa, welcome to Planetary Radio. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you so much for coming to visit.

You know, my plan was to get you and Eric Christiansen together, because I thought that would be so cool to have the two leaders of two of the world's most successful, most prominent sky searches together in the same room.

We couldn't quite make the schedules work, so I'm happy to talk to the two of you separately, but it would have been fun. I don't even want to say hi to Eric.

Hi, Eric. We actually don't see each other in person very often.

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