When you wish upon a star, from Southern California Public Radio's Crawford Family Forum,

this is Planetary Radio Live.

Here's your host, The Planetary Society's

Matt Kaplan.

Welcome to Public Radio's Travel Show that takes you to the final frontier.

Took us a year to get around to it, but we're back with Planrad Live in front of a standing room only Pasadena audience.

That harmonious humming you here is the award-winning barbershop quartet high fidelity.

We'll hear more from them in a few minutes.

Also coming up is our special guest,

the author of how I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming,

Cal Texts. Mike Brown. Joining us for that conversation will be the

Planetary Society's executive director Bill Nye, the Science Guy.

Bruce Betts will also be here for a live version of our What's Up segment,

including the chance for several people in our studio

audience to win a planetary radio t-shirt. In fact, the whole gang is here with one

glaring exception. We always get started by talking with planetary society blogger Emily Lochuwala, but she is on the road this week so instead of a live appearance, we've got something very special for you.

A few weeks ago, Emily, Bill Nyeye and I visited the jet propulsion lab near

Pasadena where we put on bunny suits and entered what's known as the high bay

room. Waiting inside was Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory rover, that will be leaving for

the Red Planet in just a few months.

First though, we had to pass through a man-made hurricane designed to blow away any last bits of earth dust before entering

the massive clean room.

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