Sailing the Grand Canions of Titan this week on planetary radio. Welcome, I'm at Kaplan, of the Planetary Society with more of a human adventure across our

solar system and beyond.

We're not yet ready to cruise up those magnificent newly discovered Arroyo's on Saturn's big moon,

but Cornell's Alex Hayes looks forward to the day when we can.

My conversation with him begins right after we hear from Emily Lochuwala and Bill Nye.

And just before a particularly enjoyable What's Up visit with Bruce Betts that features a cameo

by one of my favorite Star Trek actors and a new olympian listener contest,

Emily is the Planetary Society senior editor.

Emily it's back to Mars, the Red Planet, where Curiosity continues to explore.

Bring us up to date from this entry that you posted on the 12th of August.

Well I seem to be at a rhythm now of checking in on curiosity about once every two months.

Curiosity tends to go on drives of about half a kilometer long and then does a little drilling stop and that's what they did this last time.

Curiosity is currently headed south.

The rover is finally driven around to the western edge of this dune field and is beginning to cross it at a place

called Murray Butts, named for our late co-founder, Bruce Murray.

And the scenery is absolutely spectacular.

These butts, these rocks standing, they remind everybody of the American Southwest. It's just been stunning.

Absolutely gorgeous. The very first image that you put in here is a 360 degree panorama,

and I want to encourage people, go ahead and zoom in, don't resist, because it just gets prettier and prettier.

And it's going to keep getting prettier because curiosity is now driving among the Butts.

That wasn't actually the original plan. The original plan was to go just to the east of them so you'd have the views of the beets on the west and views of the dunes on the east but they seem to have changed their minds and they're now driving in among them so pretty soon the

rover is going to be completely surrounded by these topographic features.

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