Saving the Planet, Voices from the Planetary Defense Conference this week on planetary radio.

Welcome to the Travel Show that takes you to the Final Frontier.

I'm at Kaplan of the Planetary Society just barely back from my vacation and hoping you have or

had a happy asteroid day.

Actually, every day is a happy asteroid day. Actually, every day is a happy asteroid day so long as your planet

isn't hit by a big one. The official asteroid day comes each year on June 30th. It marks

the anniversary of the monstrous 1907 impact over Tunguska that

leveled 2,000 square kilometers of forest. We'll hold our own small celebration as we visit with a handful of the participants in last

April's Planetary Defense Conference.

Bill Nye will return next week and we'll also go to Emily Lochuala for an extended preview of the New Horizon

Probes imminent encounter with Pluto. And thank you all for coming. I think we're

done. That's how William Ailer of the Aerospace Corporation ended the 2015 Planetary Defense Conference

near Rome in Italy. Bill created the PDC in 2008. Defense Conference five very full days of presentations, discussions, and a planetary radio live show that you can

hear in our April 21st episode at planetary.org.

radio. The conference also included another dramatic multi-day simulation exercise that I hope to bring

you more of in an upcoming show. Paul Chotis manages the NASA Near Earth Object Program office at the Jet Propulsion Lab.

He was the master planner of this year's simulated deep impact.

Good morning, Paul.

Good morning.

Give us a preview. What is going to happen as the exercise really takes over the PDC?

Well we're part way through the exercise. We've done four injects so far and where we left the exercise last night is that the kinetic impact

or spacecraft were about to be launched from the Earth and we have six of them going

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