Observing a planet called Earth this week on planetary radio. Hi everyone, I'm Matt Kaplan.

Welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the Final Frontier.

And sometimes that Final Frontier is right now. show that takes you to the final frontier.

And sometimes that final frontier is right here at home.

Our guest is JPL scientist Anne-Marie Eldering, an expert on planetary atmospheres, and especially the one we breathe. You thought there was no sound in space?

Think again as Emily Lachto-Wala takes us to the edge of the solar system for this week's

Q&A. And Bruce Betts will join me for a frigid look at the night sky,

along with the new space trivia contest.

Just a few seconds for headlines,

NASA now expects Space Shuttle Atlantis to launch on January 10th, partly so that the huge

space shuttle team can fully enjoy the holidays.

The American Space Agency also reports that the epoxy mission, relying on the deep impact

spacecraft, has been redirected to a different comet. The reason? The original

target, Comet Boethan, has disappeared.

The details are in Emily's December 14 blog entry at planetary.org.

And here she is again. I'll be right back with Anne-Marie Eldering. Hi, I'm Emily Lockwala with questions and answers.

A listener asked, has the Genesis mission produced any results or did the crash contaminate the samples.

Genesis was a space mission that planned to collect samples of particles from the solar wind

and closed them in a carefully cleaned and sterilized capsule and return them gently to Earth so that scientists

could use the samples to analyze directly the composition of the sun.

Unfortunately, the sample returned capsule's parachute failed to open so when it returned to Earth in 2004 it crashed into a muddy plane.

The sample capsule cracked open and many of its delicate detectors were crumpled or shattered.

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