Hello and welcome to Backchat. If the Nature podcast is Pluto, now in full Technicolor, then Backchat is its moon Charon, orbiting the main event and vying for your attention.

In Backchat, we reflect on the biggest science stories each month and our reporters get to tell you what they really think of them.

I'm Kerry Smith, and joining me in the studio in London, I have Lizzie Gibney.

Hello, I'm Lizzie. I write about physics from our office in London. And Richard Van Norton joins us.

Hi, I edit Nature's online news from London. And on the line from Boulder, Colorado, we have

reporter Alex Wittsey. Yes, hi, I cover Earth and Planetary Sciences from my home here in Colorado.

Coming up, it's everyone's favorite dwarf planet. We've got better pictures than ever before of Pluto.

So Pluto is getting a starring role in Backchat this month. We'll also be talking about science

teaching. Do you remember university lectures fondly, or did you sleep through most of them?

And what do we know about the science of science teaching?

And I'm also looking forward to discussing how to go to space without actually going to space.

Clue, you'll need some scuba gear.

Plus the rich donor who's keen to keep listening for aliens.

Now first, the big science news event this month was, of course, the New Horizons spacecraft reaching Pluto's neighbourhood, taking some snaps and then carrying on its solar system safari.

Alex, you went to New Horizons HQ, didn't you, to watch the scientists who were watching the spacecraft.

Did you have a nice time?

I did. I just got back from a week at the Johns Hopkins University applied physics lab, which is a long name for a research lab, sort of in the outer suburbs of Washington, D.C. And that's where the spacecraft was built and where the spacecraft is operated from.

Plenty of excitement, I suppose, as the spacecraft did its fly by and came out the other side.

Yes, absolutely. So as you know, this was the

first time we've ever sent a spacecraft to Pluto, and it was one of those quick flyby visits,

which is what we typically do the first time we go to any planet. So it was nine years traveling

there and then sort of an action-packed 24 hours when the spacecraft whizzed by super

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