A frozen sea found on Mars. We'll talk about it on planetary radio.

Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan. The European Space Agency's

Mars Express Orbiter has found good evidence for a body of water, or rather water ice,

as big as Earth's North Sea.

Gerhard Neukam is principal investigator for the camera that imaged it.

He'll tell us about this and other exciting discoveries made in just the last few weeks.

Later on, Bruce Betts will give the first of our new solar sale posters to the winner of

this week's space trivia contest.

Here are some of the headlines bouncing around

our galaxy. You probably know about the asteroid belt located between Mars and

Jupiter. Well another belt of rocky debris has been found, but this one circles a sun-like star

that's 41 light years away.

It's an important step along the path to discovering small rocky planets, possibly like one called Earth.

And speaking of asteroids, you can check out the newly revised Torino scale at planetary.org. It provides an easy way to classify both the likelihood that a space rock will hit the Earth

and how much damage it might do.

NASA has pushed back the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery by a week to May 22nd.

This will give the return to flight mission planners a few more days to finish testing and certification of new safety systems.

And we're sorry to report the loss of one of humanity's greatest minds and voices.

Philip Morrison died quietly at his home on April 22nd.

Born in 1915, Morrison became part of the World War II Manhattan Project.

The physicist would later help to create the search for extraterrestrial intelligence or

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