The latest from Saturn and a new companion for Venus this week on planetary radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final

frontier.

I'm at Kaplan. A busy show today as we take you from Earth's

cloud-shrouded sister all the way to the mighty ringed behemoth. There is big

news from both planets. In a few minutes, we'll get a Saturn update from Linda Spilker,

one of our favorite solar system explorers.

Linda is deputy project scientist for the Cassini mission,

which continues to surprise and delight denizens of

third rock with amazing discoveries. A special report from the Planetary Society's

Emily Lactualis is just around the bend.

Our Q&A correspondent is back from Germany where she witnessed the arrival at Venus of the

European Space Agency's Venus Express orbiter.

Of course we'll also check on the night sky with Bruce Betts and see if we can give away just

one more Explorer's Guide to Mars poster. And as if that wasn't enough, there are these headlines.

Is Xena Warrior Princess taking steroids?

The Hubble Space Telescope has just confirmed that the proposed 10th planet still known officially as

2003 UB 313 really is bigger than Pluto, though not by much. It's a difference of 100 kilometers or so, but that difference

may make all the difference to the International Astronomical Union as it debates whether

the far-away object will get planetary status.

The details are at planetary.org.

Attention ET.

Shine your light our way.

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