They don't get no respect. You're in us and Neptune this week on planetary radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final

frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan.

They are beautiful and they are much farther away

than Jupiter and Saturn and they've gotten a bad rap with some scientists saying

they're not particularly interesting. Wrong says says Heidi Hamill, and she'll tell us why she loves them.

The Space Science Institute's co-director of research

makes a good case for much more research

on these true- blue gas giants.

Later today we'll go to Bruce Betts for the low down on what's high up in the night sky,

along with a new space trivia contest and your chance to win a planetary radio t-shirt. Let's hope that by the time you hear

this week's show, Discovery is safely back on the ground. At last word, NASA had given the

go-ahead for a Monday morning July 17 landing.

That was after astronauts took another look at the nose of the spacecraft and determination that the slow leak of either

hydrazine fuel or nitrogen gas from one of the shuttle's three auxiliary

power units won't be a problem.

German astronaut Thomas Reiter won't be along for the ride.

He's the newest resident of the International Space Station,

which now is back up to a crew of three. Robert Bigelow has proven he's not full of hot air,

but his Genesis 1 spacecraft is. the big inflatable test module made it to orbit

atop a converted Russian missile and appears to be working well. Bigelow Aerospace's goal is

creation of a huge inflatable space station and they want to get

...