So, so hi everybody, my name is Fraser Cane, I'm the publisher of Universe Today and once

again it's time for our weekly space hangout this time for February 16th, 2012.

We've got some collection of our usual cast of characters this week.

We've got, and again in no official order, just how I see them.

We've got Emily Lachdawalla from the Planetary Society, got Dr. Ian O'Neill from Discovery

Space.

We've got Nancy Atkinson from Universe Today and Dr. Pamela Gay from Astronomy Cast.

And now we've got a special guest this week which is awesome thanks to Emily for setting

this up which is Alan Stern from NASA and he's the, I guess the principal investigator

for the NASA's new horizon spacecraft.

So we're going to do a regular roundup of space news stories and Alan can jump in at any

point and provide his insights and then I thought at the end, we'll take the time and

chat with Alan about new horizons, ask them some questions and then open this up to

people who are watching this if they want to ask any questions about Pluto and the Coyper

Belt and new horizons and Pluto's Planethood status which I know Alan has a lot of opinions

about so I'm sure we'll hear them.

So why don't we first get on to some of the news this week.

So the first thing is the, and this is sort of the big one that we've all been covering

and this is the new NASA budget that was released on Tuesday, Monday, Tuesday this week

and had some just very deep cuts that were made to various programs especially Mars explorations

so Pamela can you give us the overview on the budget.

So this came out on Monday, February 13th and the press conference started off on a note

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