Meet Laurie Leshin, the new director of JPL this week on Planetary Radio.

Welcome, I'm at Kaplan of the Planetary Society with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond.

Laurie Leshin took over as leader of the Jet Propulsion Lab in May.

She invited me to her office on the vast campus of the NASA Center that is operated by her alma mater, Caltech.

You'll hear our very enjoyable conversation in a few minutes.

We've also got a great bonus to share.

I'd invited our own Casey Dreyer to tell us about his insightful and inspiring essay marking the 25th anniversary of the film Contact.

We had that conversation, but only after Casey helped me explore the announcement by Russia that it will withdraw from the International Space Station after 2024.

All that, and a visit to Berger Heaven with Planetary Society Chief Scientist Bruce Betts in this week's What's Up?

You've never seen Jupiter like this, not unless you've already caught the infrared images of our solar systems giant captured by the JWST.

There it is in two different wavelengths at the top of the July 22 edition of the downlink, the Planetary Society's free weekly newsletter.

Below it is a real stunner. It's a full globe photo of Mars taken by the United Arab Emirates Hope spacecraft in February.

Kudos to Jason Major for processing it from the UAE's data.

We learned that NASA has decided to delay the launch of the Viper Rover to the Moon Viper.

That's Volatile's investigating polar exploration rover.

And the ingenuity helicopter on Mars is expected to rise through that thin air once again in August.

Engineers and scientists expect dust storms to subside by then, allowing the tiny, worldly bird to fully charge its batteries.

Also, a Planetary.org slash downlink is an item about my upcoming retirement as host of this show and a link to where we are inviting applications.

Casey Dreyer is the Planetary Society's chief advocate and senior space policy advisor.

Casey, welcome back. You know, my intent was that we would merely talk about this piece that you have written for the Planetary Society website,

which I believe is one of the best and really most beautifully written pieces I have ever seen on our website.

We will come back to that in moments, but it was only moments ago anyway that I learned about this news, which is bound to be big news about the ISS and Russia's involvement.

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