Landing on Mars is harder than you think this week on planetary radio. Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final

frontier.

I'm at Kaplan.

Airbags. They save lives in cars and they got spirit and opportunity

safely to the surface of the red planet. But Rob Manning of JPL says bigger rovers and

human beings will need another solution.

He'll tell us what NASA engineers have in mind.

Later we'll join Bruce Betts Poolside for this week's edition of What's Up

and your chance to win a planetary

radio t-shirt. Let's see what's up around a solar system this week. Both the

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Venus Express are slowly settling into their final orbits.

The Mars Express Orbiter says,

Don't just follow the water, follow the phyllo silicates.

Emily Lactawala explains in her blog at planetary.org.

Meanwhile Spirit has settled down for a quiet winter.

The little rover with the gimpy leg is on a hill dubbed Low Ridge Haven.

It is tilted a bit toward the north so that its

solar panels will catch a few more rays hopefully enough to keep the probe

going through the next eight months. At least it has a lovely view. Check out the scene at Emily's place.

Finally, we want to mark the passing of test pilot and near astronaut Scott Crossfield.

Back before the Spam in a Can Mercury program program there were these guys like Scott and Chuck Yeager who strapped themselves into rocket planes and went faster and higher than any human ever had.

Crossfield had several close calls in the amazing X-15, but he also made aviation history

...