An oceanographer dives into the seas of Europa this week on planetary radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan.

Even as he leads revolutionary research on Earth's oceans, John Delaney

is dreaming of the salty sea under the European ice. The University of Washington

oceanographer will share those dreams. ice. The University of Washington

Oceanographer will share those dreams and tell us about another one that's

about to become reality, the Neptune Project.

That mysterious moon of Jupiter also floats to the surface in this week's particularly

wacky What's Up segment with Bruce Vats.

With not a moment to spare, let's review the week's top space headlines.

The very first pictures have been returned by the

Mars reconnaissance orbiter. The test shots are already as good as any yet

taken from orbit, with much better images yet to come as MRO settles into a far lower orbit.

Meanwhile down below on the sands of the red planet,

little spirit continues to limp toward a small hill that may enable it to survive another

Martian winter. If it makes it, the incline will help the rover's solar panels

gather the needed energy. A broken wheel motor isn't helping any. A bit of sad news that

were late in getting out. We told you several weeks ago that one more attempt

would be made by the Deep Space Network to contact Faraway Pioneer 10.

Well, we called, but no one answered.

Pioneer anomaly team member Slaviturchelf has additional details in his report at planetary.org.

Comets, asteroid, solar system is full of them.

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