A new era opens on the International Space Station this week on planetary radio. Radio. Welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the Final Frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. The ISS is about to transition from

construction to application in a big way. This is the work that may keep

space station crews busy for another 10 years or more.

We'll review this milestone with NASA's assistant associate administrator for the ISS, Mark

U-RAN.

Bill Nye, the Science and Planetary Guide, joins us from an international conference in Prague,

while Bruce Betts and I will welcome our first listener-created random space fact rendition, and it's a doozy.

There's no better way to get underway than another conversation with Emily Loch Duwala.

She is the Planetary Society Science and Technology Coordinator, the editor of its blog that you can find

at planetary.org, and as you're about to hear, a very busy mom.

Emily, as always a lot to about, beginning with opportunity and a great image that

proves they are still stopping to smell the roses or otherwise.

Well, yeah, stopping to smell the meteorites after all.

It's pretty amazing this landscape at Meridiani Plonum.

It's flat, it's nearly featureless,

and then once in a while you see off in the distance this dark blob

and it turns out to be a stony or iron meteorite that landed there a billion years ago.

Aelon Ra is another such meteorite.

It's a relatively small one.

They say about the size of a toaster.

And there's actually another one visible in the distance in this recent opportunity image,

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