We'll get wise with the universe this week onetary radio.

Happy New Year, everyone. Welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier.

I'm at Kaplan of the Planetary Society.

Wise, the Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer

is ready to reveal much more of the solar system and beyond.

We'll talk with Mission Head Ned Wright

about what's in store. Bruce Betts will tell us about the night sky and more this

week, including word of the three finalists for an interplanetary mission to come.

Bill Nye will be back next week, but Emily Lachawala is here right now with the best of

her blog, which last week included her picks for the best space images of 2009.

Emily, let's lead off with your somewhat sad piece about Spirit.

I guess the outlook is not great.

The Outlook is not great. It looks like the mission has formally given up on trying to get Spirit out of the

Sand Trap. Now they're turning their efforts to trying to get a better, more favorable tilt on the solar panels so that

they can get enough power to last through the coming winter. And that might mean

doing exactly the opposite of what they've been trying to do.

Yeah, exactly. They might have to dig some of the wheels in more just to try to dig one side down to tilt the panels more toward the north.

So what was the big challenge here? I mean, they'd had six properly functioning wheels do they think they might have been able to get out? Yeah, although you know ifs ifs are cheap if they had six properly functioning wheels they would never have been in this position in the first

place they would have climbed on top of home plate in order to get to the opposite end of it.

But instead they were traveling around it in uncharted territory and wandered into the sand trap and yeah probably if they had six functioning wheels

they could have gotten out. What happened in the event is that the most buried wheel is the one that

wound up failing at the end and so they only have four fully functioning

...