Greg and Jim Benford on how to listen for E.T. this week on planetary Radio. Radio. Welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. It's no accident that they are called

Benford Beacons. We'll talk to two of the three Benford's who came up with a

new approach to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Bill Nye, the science and planetary guy, will report on the International Space Conference.

He attended in Prague, the NASA budget vote in Congress, and another downside of living in space, lost fingernails.

Yes, ew.

And down the line I'll be joined by Bruce Betts who poke around the night sky in What's Up?

About 200 scientists and engineers gathered in Monrovia, California last week

for the fourth Mars Science Laboratory landing site community workshop. Our Emily Lachto-walla was there for much of the

discussion about where the big new rover now called Curiosity should set down on

the red planet. As she put it in her blog, none of the remaining site candidates

were voted off the island. Emily great reporting from that Mars Science

Lander, Landing Site meeting, there's quite a bit to read there, but you seem to summarize it all in a couple of

pithy statements, the first of them being, we don't have to guess anymore. We can actually

see what the potential hazards are.

Yeah, that was a pretty astonishing story. actually see what the potential hazards are.

Yeah, that was a pretty astonishing statement to come out of this week's landing site

selection meetings.

The fact that with High-rise and Kriism and CTX, the three main instruments on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, we can see every single

individual hazard that might end Curiosity rover's life upon landing.

But we can't target curiosity that well.

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