Going to bed for NASA this week on planetary radio. I'm Mad Kaplan of the Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final

frontier.

I'm Mad Kaplan of the Planetary Society. Heather Archuleta loves human space

fight so much. She stayed in bed for seven weeks, not even getting up to, well, to do anything.

But she's up now, and we'll talk to her in a couple of minutes.

Bill Nye says the world can't afford to turn space into just another military theater,

and Emily Lachto-wallalo will step out of the blogosphere to bring

us another space Q&A. Bruce Betts will light up the sky with today's What's Up segment.

Speaking of Emily's blog, did you see her big announcement?

It's at planetary.org, where you can also read her story about the Ulysses Solar Orbiter.

It's still kicking and still returning data months after Nigel Angold told us it had just days to live.

What is it with these spacecraft that just keep going and going?

After weeks of delay, Space Shuttle Discovery made it off the pad last Sunday

and another of those spectacular night launches. A fruit bat sitting on the external tank

nearly got the right of its life.

Elsewhere in the Cosmos, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is back up and running,

while sister orbiter Mars Odyssey successfully rebooted.

And way out by that pretty ringed planet, Cassini switched

over to its backup set of thrusters. No big deal. The first set was just

getting crotchety after 11 years in space.

There's a new 24 by 7 webcam on the International Space Station.

We've got the link at planetary.org slash radio.

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