A Plan Rad live bonus 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. I told you last week that we had far more of our

live show with Mike Brown and Bill Nye than we could fit in a single half hour.

So indeed we are in the bonus round this week. Stay tuned for more of our

conversation with Mike about his discovery of other worlds in our solar system, the demotion

of Pluto, and why he is increasingly excited about the New Horizons

mission to that former planet. Barbara Shop Quartet High Fidelity is also

back for an encore. I can't get enough of their award-winning four-part harmony or

their Star Trek parodies. Emily Lachtwala is still on vacation and has the week off.

She'll be back for our regular show opening conversation about the Planetary

Society blog next time. By the way, there have been some terrific guest bloggers filling in

at planetary.org.

One of them is our friend Bruce Betts, who wrote about the return from space of the shuttle life experiment.

He'll give us an update when we join him for What's Up and a new space trivia contest.

Let's get started with commentary from Bill Nye.

Hey, Bill Nye, the planetary guy here.

This week, the big news, NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, okayed a mission to an asteroid.

That's right. Osiris Rex, the origin, spectral interpretation, resource, identification, security, Rex. the origins

spectral interpretation security

wrecks regularith explorer

will go to asteroid one nine nine

...