Observing the Sun from the Sun from the top of the world this week on

planetary radio. Radio. Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier and this week back

to New Mexico for the second stop on our science and space tour of

that land of enchantment.

I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society and we're headed for the National Solar Observatory

at Sacramento Peak to meet Dave Dooling.

We'll also get a Phobos grunt update from Bill Nye, the Science Guy.

Bruce Betts is the manager of the Planetary Society's Phobos Life Experiment on board the Russian Phobos-grunt

spacecraft.

He'll give us his take on the troubled mission just before we give away another planetary

radio t-shirt.

First, though, let's check in with Emily

Lachawala who recently made her own pilgrimage to the desert. Emily I think we're

going to talk just about one story today and it's the trip the you took last week that if truth be told I kind of

wish I could have gone along with you instead of going up to San Luis Obispo although it was

great fun to take a look at light sale and go to that review meeting.

But tell us about this trip to the desert that you made.

Goldstone, the Deep Space Network radio telescope station, it's kind of in Los Angeles's backyard. It's about

150 mile drive and I've lived here for 11 years and I've never gotten a chance to

go see it. So I was really thrilled when the Jet Propulsion Lab invited

media out to take a look at the most gigantic of their radio

telescopes the great DSS 14 70 meter antenna and the occasion was of course

...