To FoboSend back with Life, this week on planetary radio. I'm Matt Kaplan.

Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan. The Russians are coming to Mars's bigger

moon and they plan to bring a piece of Phobos back to Earth. Along for the ride might be a tiny planetary society experiment that may help us learn if life on Earth could

originate on the red planet.

We'll feature highlights of a seminar held at the Planetary Society just a few days ago.

You'll hear from Alexander Sasha Zakorov, chief scientist for the Russian Space Research

Institute, Fobos expert Tom Duxbury of the Jet Propulsion Lab, and our

own Bruce Betts, manager of the Planetary Society's Life Experiment.

Of course we'll also check in with Bruce for a what's up look at the night sky and we've got yet another prize to announce in our fifth anniversary contest now underway.

What's the news from around the solar system and beyond? Start with another

congregation of planets that just keeps getting bigger. A team of

astronomers has announced discovery of a fifth planet circling the star known as 55 cancree just 41

light years away. That's the most complex found to date other than our own

system that is. You can learn more on a nice article at planetary.org.

NASA Headquarters has restored two previously deleted instruments to the Mars Science Laboratory

rover, scheduled ahead for the red planet in less than two years.

One is the extremely cool chem-cam that will zap Martian rocks with a laser and then analyze the stuff that emerges.

Finally, a ray gun on Mars.

We've got such powerful telescopes.

Why can't they see the spacecraft we've sent flying around the neighborhood?

Emily is ready to tell us why in this new edition of Q&A.

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