What would you do with 10 billion dollars for space this week on planetary radio? on Planetary Radio. Radio. Welcome to the Travel Show that takes you to the Final Frontier.

I'm at Kaplan of the Planetary Society.

Space Up is the worldwide network of space unconferences.

This week we'll visit Space Up Los Angeles to ask its passionate attendees a question. What would they do with a whole lot of money

handed to them by the President of the United States

to encourage space development and exploration?

Then we'll check in with the passionate Bruce Betts for another report on the night sky and much more.

Bill Nye is away this week, but senior editor Emily Lockwala is standing by.

Emily today, it's two missions to Mars, one getting ready to go and one that is on its way.

We hope what's up with the Mars Orbiter Mission?

India's Mars Orbiter Mission launched last week into Earth Orbit. They don't have a rocket that's powerful

enough to send it directly to Mars, so they launched into Earth orbit and are slowly raising

the apogee of their orbit until they can finally get it high enough to where they can fire the rocket again and head on to Mars. Well they completed their first

three rocket burned successfully, but the fourth one ended early for some reason. I've read the press release on Isro's website and it has something to do

with them trying testing out their backup systems. India has done a lot of satellites

in Earth orbit but hasn't yet done a mission that requires the amount

of redundancy and autonomy that a deep space mission like a Mars mission needs.

So testing all of these things is very important.

It sounds like the test didn't quite go as planned, but also

that they're not terribly concerned about it. They're planning a cleanup

maneuver for later today. And so hopefully we'll be seeing them on their way to

Mars in a little more in about December 1st I think is still the current

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