The new Voyager Mission Project Scientist is an old friend and you'll hear from her this week on Planetary Radio.

Welcome. I'm at Kaplan of the Planetary Society with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond.

Linda Spilker of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab has been named only the second project scientist in the more than half century history of Voyager.

Our most frequent guest arrives to tell us about how honored she is to succeed the Great Ed Stone and what those distant twin spacecraft are up to in interstellar space.

Before we check in with Linda you'll want to hear our own Bruce Betz prepare us for the end of the Planetary Society's fabulously successful light sail 2 mission.

It could happen any moment now as the little CubeSat with the big wings reenters Earth's atmosphere.

We'll also hear from Sarah Alamed about the society's brand new and pretty darn cool program for kids called the Planetary Academy.

The latest edition of our free weekly newsletter the downlink is waiting for you at planetary.org slash downlink but the real elephant in the solar system this week is the Artemis 1 mission.

I'm hitting this week's planetary radio deadline just a few hours before NASA attempts again to launch that giant space launch system rocket toward the moon.

In addition to the uncrewed Orion capsule it carries a herd of CubeSats including the near Earth asteroid or near Scout solar sail that will be released shortly after liftoff.

I'm sorry I'm not at the Cape this time for what should be a spectacular night launch if it happens.

My colleague Jason Davis has updated his comprehensive Artemis 1 launch guide. You'll find it at planetary.org. Godspeed Artemis.

What a long road it was to light sail 2. I was around for the Planetary Society's attempt to become the first to fly a solar sail.

That was our cosmos 1 back in 2005. That big spacecraft plunged into the sea when its Russian booster failed.

We came back 10 years later with a radically different approach a CubeSat called light sail that has famously been described as being the size of a loaf of bread.

The brief test mission of light sail 1 was difficult but ultimately successful in showing that we were on the right path.

Finally in 2019 light sail 2 rocketed into mid-Earth orbit atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy.

It spread its sails a few weeks later becoming the first solar sail to maintain and raise its orbit propelled by nothing but the light of the sun.

Now nearly three and a half years later long after anyone thought would still be sailing our little spacecraft paid for by 50,000 individual donors is nearing the end.

My what's up colleague Bruce Betts leads the light sail program. Hey chief scientist and light sail program manager you look kind of tired is there a reason for that?

I feel kind of tired that would be the reason because because our spacecraft it's burning up in the atmosphere really in the next few days and it's been a kind of crazy monitoring that and reporting out on it and the weeping keeps me awake as well.

I'm glad you haven't lost your sense of humor this is a big deal three to half years 18,000 orbits 8 million kilometers 5 million miles that's right out of the first sentence of your new article add planetary dot org light sail 2 is about to burn up and so I refer people there if you want more detail but but give it to us in a nutshell which actually is one of your subheadings.

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