Hello and welcome to Backchat. If the Nature podcast is a hardback copy of the Oxford English Dictionary, then Backchat is an online message board full of unintelligible slang.

This month, which scientific buzzwords get our journalists hot under the collar? What just happened to Europe's Mars probe? And what if government ministers got to suggest what courses universities can teach?

I'm Kerry Smith and joining me in the studio in London.

I have senior reporter Dan Cressy.

Hello.

I also have senior reporter Lizzie Gibney.

Hello, Kerry.

And editorials editor, I hope that's the right title, David Adam.

Hello, so do I.

Now coming up, the UK government is considering a new law that would

shake up the way science is funded here and potentially allow more input from the government into how

universities do what they do. We chat about the implications of that for the UK and similar

scenarios elsewhere. The European Space Agency has lost touch with its Mars probe. What's the prognosis?

What special magic fairy dust did NASA use to manage to land its rover

and why hasn't Europe got some of the same dust?

And we'll also be synergising and benchmarking a few of our favourite scientific buzzwords a little bit later on.

So stay tuned because we really are at the nexus of that,

garnering a great deal of impact for our work in that field.

Why not track our progress throughout the show, not just in that segment by playing buzzword bingo along with us,

flag any buzzwords that we accidentally use as you listen through with the hashtag backchat buzzword on Twitter.

Right, on with the show and why not go to Mars first.

Lizzie, what was supposed to happen there yesterday?

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