A space-faring robot named Wally and his present-day ancestors 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. Pixar and Disney's cute little trash comp actor is number one in American movie theaters.

But what, if anything, does Wall E have to say about the future of robotic exploration in space.

It's not quite the stretch you may think it is.

We'll hear from Caltech physicist and roboticist Wolfgang Fink, along with a word or two from Wally's creator Andrew Stanton.

Bill Nye has an explosive new commentary about the first ever observation of a supernova just

getting started. And we'll check on the night sky with Bruce Betts

who has a pretty cool prize for the winner of this week's space trivia contest

it's a Wall E video game for the Nintendo Wii.

Emily Lachowal is on vacation.

Water on Mercury?

Well, at least we can say there is water above Mercury.

The messenger spacecraft team, led by Sean Solomon announced astounding results from the

probe's first flyby of that hot little world last January.

What's surprising is the amount of water in Mercury's atmosphere.

Could it be coming from pockets of ice in permanently shaded polar craters?

You can catch the full story at planetary.org

where there is also another great status report on the Mars Exploration Rovers.

Is the Planetary Society going to lose the race to put a solar sail in space?

Not really, though a so-called nanosail from the Marshall Space in space fight center may soon be launched.

Actually, the society has cooperated with Marshall on this experiment,

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