The Phoenix will not rise again this week on planetary radio. Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final

frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. The Phoenix Mars

Lander will never be heard from again, yet its brief life on the surface of the

Red Planet has provided new hope of real life on that forbidding world.

We'll talk once again with Peter Smith, head of the Phoenix Mission, about what we've learned

from his spacecraft.

Emily Lachto-walla marvels at the thousands of asteroids revealed by the WISE probe

and gives us a preview of next week's blog.

Bill Nye counts down the six new technologies NASA hopes to rely on for future space exploration,

and Bruce Betts will sail the void in what's up.

Is the moon sailing away?

That's Bruce's random space back this week. Atlantis is home, probably,

to stay. The space shuttle returned from a very successful mission to the International

Space Station. It will be prepped for one more trip, but will

only fly if it is needed as a rescue vehicle for the last scheduled shuttle mission later

this year. In other news, Sophia, the stratospheric observatory for infrared astronomy, has achieved

first light.

The 100 inch telescope mounted in the fuselage of a Boeing 747 made a successful test flight last week.

Let's go to Emily for her report on the best of the Planetary Society blog.

Emily are usually very clean Skype connection, not quite as good as usual, but there's

good reason for that.

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