Meet the Ratman on this week's planetary radio. Go.

Welcome back everyone. I'm Matt Kaplan.

Lots of people to visit with this week, including Bob Anderson. He's the member of the Mars Exploration

Rover team who is sometimes known as the Rat Man. We'll find out why in a minute

after we meet another of the student astronauts and later today it's

the Astrobots direct from Mars and we mean it this time.

We'll hear from Biff, Sandy and their human buddy Bruce Bats.

Stay with us.

My

Hi, my name is Kristen Rodzignac, and I'm 16 years old and I'm from Canada, but I'm currently

living in Colorado Springs here in the U.S. and I'm one of the student astronauts and we've actually had a really

awesome week we've got to talk to a lot of the scientists they've been very open

for us to come talk to them if they see us peering over the shoulder, they'll stop and pretty much explain everything about the picture they're working on and it's really exciting to see their insight and see what they have to say and talk to the different

scientists.

I've just always been interested in a whole diverse background.

I've always liked to try a whole bunch of different things and one of the ways I do that is to the arts as well the sciences.

The art I just love music but I guess it helps me in the sciences.

Well when I return I've got a couple of presentations, definitely with just my classes.

I want to know what I've been up to, why I got to my school for two weeks, and my principals

organizing some stuff, and I've also hooked up with the Challenger Learning Center in Colorado Springs and I'm going to be

Doing some presentations both for their public presentation and for their regular program with middle school students.

So I'm going to come in and talk to them about my experiences.

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