From Russia with rockets and Lou Friedman this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. The co-founder and former executive director of the society

returns from the Russian Federation with news of a renewed spirit of exploration in that

vast country, or is there?

Blue will provide a bit of a light-sill solar sale update as well.

The spacecraft formerly known as Deep Impact is about to encounter Comet Hartley too, and Emily Lachtoala is all over it.

Our space blogger also geeked out at Wootstock, but that's another story.

Bill Nye has been on a role across America for science and space. This

time he'll join us from, well I'm not sure, but I hope you'll join Bruce Betts and

me for an all-you-can-eat helping of planets, stars, and fish tacos.

We've also got one more wonders of the Solar System DVD

set to give away in the space trivia contest.

A reminder, if all goes well, you'll be sharing my adventure at the Kennedy Space Center next week,

and if Discovery doesn't launch as planned, you'll still be sharing my adventure at KSC.

I'll also be blogging at planetary.org and tweeting at planrad. Here is

Ms. Lochuwala. Emily let's start with an event that's going to happen in

our solar system probably before some people hear the show

this week that you've been covering all along, including some new radar images of this comet,

Hartley 2. That's right.

Deep Impact is going to be flying past Hartley 2 very early in the morning, my time on Thursday,

November 4th.

Hartley 2 will be the smallest comet that's ever been visited by a spacecraft which is kind of a nice

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