This is planetary radio.

It's not every day you get to have conversations with a former NASA Associate Administrator and a little robot,

or more accurately an astrobot about to leave for Mars.

Welcome back everyone, I'm Matt Kaplan. Dr. West Huntress is the NASA official

turned president of the planetary society. He also directs the Geophysical Lab at the Carnegie Institution in Washington.

And we'll hear from Bruce Betts, not once but twice, including a special report from the Kennedy

Space Center, where he'll reveal the just announced names of the two Mars Exploration

Rovers.

Bruce also met the nine-year-old girl who came up with those winning names.

That's at the end of today's show. Before that Bruce and I will meet

that Astrobot. Biff Starling is a LEGO mini-figure representation who sits atop a planetary society DVD containing 4 million names, all about

to leave for the planet Mars on one of those rovers.

I hear he's quite a little character. First though here's that conversation with

Wes Huntress. He sat down with us at Planetary Society headquarters last week.

Dr Huntress thanks very much for being part of Planetary Radio this week.

Oh, it's a delight to be here.

What brings you to Southern California?

Oh, I come to the West Coast about every six to eight weeks generally to the jet

propulsion laboratory where I'm still a visiting scientist so I kind of get to

play in my my original pond out here and you have an even greater history

a laundry history at JPL and in this region right yeah I started in 1968 with the

launch of and landing of surveyor 7 on the moon. That's what attracted me to

...