New Rockets, a solar sail and a surprise this week on planetary radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. What a week, an impact on Jupiter

caught by amateur telescopes, a solar sail about to spread its wings in space, a brilliant success for a new commercial rocket, and that surprise

I've already mentioned.

It's all coming up on today's show, beginning with this audio clip that may sound like it's from NASA but it's not.

Four, three, two, one.

Video stage one.

Lift off. We the Falcon 9.

We have Moll.

Lift off of the Falcon 9.

Falcon 9 has cleared the towers.

An engine shutdown.

Falcon 9 stage 2 and the directing capsule are now in orbit around the Earth.

That was a heavily compressed version of what many of us heard as the SpaceX Falcon 9 lifted off from Florida for the very first time.

Does anyone still believe commercial launch vehicles can't put what we need into low-Earth orbit?

We'll bring you more coverage in the next few weeks.

Still to come is Lou Friedman,

reporting to us from Japan, but first we'll check in with Planetary Society blogger Emily Lachto-Wala.

Emily it has been a very big week in space exploration, what with Ikeros and Falcon 9,

which we'll be hearing about more in the rest of the program.

And you've covered, of course, on the blog, but there is one other very, very interesting

story in planetary science out at Jupiter.

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