Phoenix discovers water on Mars again 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.

The Phoenix rose again last week as we learned

in a press conference full of very good news from the mission and for the mission.

We'll hear excerpts of that briefing on today's show, after which we'll check

in with our own Emily Lachto-Wala for her insights and analysis.

I'll also ask Emily about mysterious speculation regarding possible results from the Landers

Mika instrument that have not yet been made public.

Bill Nye, the Science Guy will be along shortly.

He's also trumpeting the success of the Phoenix

Lander, but he sees a necessary balance between robotic and human missions into the

Cosmos. And as always, Bruce Bats will drop by with another scan of the night sky, along with

his patented random space fact and the latest winner of our space trivia contest.

You could almost forget that Phoenix is not alone on the surface of Mars.

Kidding, just kidding, don't tell Steve Squires I said that.

His two rovers are trucking right along. Opportunity had a scare recently when engineers saw a current spike in the left front wheel.

It was just this kind of spike that preceded loss of the motor in spirits right front wheel.

Fortunately, in this case, it seems to have been a one-time anomaly.

Opportunity is now beginning to climb her way out of Big Victoria Crater on the Meridiani Plains.

On the other side of the Red Planet, Spirit could really use a dusting.

It's covered by a coat of the stuff.

It is somehow managed to maintain power levels that have even allowed it to do some science at

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