Messenger is finally circling Mercury this week on planetary Radio. Radio. Welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the Final Frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society.

Join us as we celebrate the mission that has just put a spacecraft in orbit around our solar

system's innermost planet.

Principal investigator Sean Solomon returns to tell us about this accomplishment and the science that's yet to come.

Much, much more is in store during this week's episode beginning with planetary society blogger Emily

Lochuwala. Emily a couple of somewhat sad stories this week

although sad for very different reasons. Let's start with some news about curiosity, formerly known as the Mars Science Laboratory.

And still probably will be known as MSL to all of the scientists and engineers on the mission even long after it's landed.

So the news this week, they're working very hard getting the rover ready for its launch

late this year.

All the instruments have been delivered, they're integrating them, they're doing all kinds of testing.

But having delivered the cameras, the main science cameras to the rover's,

Mail and Space Science Systems was hoping to be able to deliver a slightly different version of those cameras, one that actually

had a zoom capability, which would have allowed the rover to not only zoom out, zoom in,

to get views of its landscape in color, but it would enable the rover to get that view

in color, in 3D, in HD video.

And it's got to be especially sad for MSL Mast Cam co-investigator James Cameron, who is no doubt on the team for the sole purpose of getting 3D HD color video from Mars.

So better luck next time for Mailin space science systems on getting a 3D

HD color video camera onto a rover on Mars. But the the mask cam that's on there right

now is absolutely fantastic and it's going to produce the best images we've ever

had from the surface of Mars.

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