How we may someday drill deep on Mars this week on planetary radio.

Welcome to the Travel Show that takes you to the Final Frontier. I'm

Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. Join us in the California Desert

for the real world test of Planetary Deep Drill, an innovative prototype that may someday allow humans

to dig far below the surface of the red planet, Europa, and Solidus, or another icy body in

our solar neighborhood.

I've also got a special holiday treat for you toward the end of this week's show.

Bill Nye has the week off as he continues his unstoppable book tour,

but Senior Editor Emily Lock Lockwall is here with

hot news and hot images. Emily I'm hoping we can start with a description from

you about the present, the Christmas and holiday present, that the European

Space Agency has given all of us.

That's a present they've been saving up since last year actually.

It's the first release of images of the comet,

Toriamof Garasamanca, taken by the Osiris camera,

which is the science camera on Rosetta.

They had released some images before,

but all of them were taken before they actually arrived at the

comet so it was just a smudge in the middle of the view.

I haven't had a chance to dig into the data set yet but I'm really looking forward to it.

It's going to be gorgeous.

Now you do have this blog entry that has at least one already very

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