Hi, everybody. My name is Fraser Kane. I am the publisher of the universe today, and it's time for your weekly space hangout for

Thursday, September 27th, 2012.

Now, this week, we have got a bunch of stories, and we don't have a lot of time, which is why we're kind of moving really quickly here.

So we've got a huge telecon from NASA. Well, maybe not huge. An important telecon from NASA starting up in about in about 45 minutes and half of our reporting team is going to need to jump out and go and attend that to find out what interesting things have happened on Mars. Now the curiosity has zapped a bunch of rocks. So we'll be sort of probably wrapping up or losing a bunch of people as we get to that.

So this week, we're going to talk about the possibility that comet ison is going to be the brightest comet in human history, in living memory, a really cool new picture of Phobos that was returned from the curiosity rover.

We're going to have the anticipated date for Felix Baumgartner's jump from up in 20,000 feet. The new Hubble Extreme Deep Field Survey was released.

The first step for Grasshopper, SpaceX's new spacecraft, the possibility of a base beyond the moon, which would be really cool, and a new paddle mission that might get into Titan.

We've got time. We've got a couple more stories. So like I said, we're going to go pretty quick today. And so why don't we just get started. So I think the first step is going to go to my good friend. So what I should introduce the people who are here.

So joining us as a disembodied picture is Alan Boyle from NBC's cosmic log. I have to get that into my memory now. It's no longer MSNBC. It's NBC.

So can you hear us? Okay, Alan? Oh, I think he's muted himself. He's kind of thumbs up. He's got his, he's putting his things. Yes, yes, I have my thumbs up.

There we go. Yeah. Yeah. So Alan doesn't have his camera working today, but he is still here in voice. Sorry about that. No problem. So we've got Ian O'Neill from Discovery Space. We've got Jason Major from Lights in the Dark.

We've got Mike Wall from Space.com. And we've got Nancy Atkinson from Universe today. All right. So first up, let's talk with with Ian about comet ison. And this is a this could be the biggest story ever or a complete bot. So what's the

Yeah, we just do not know. And in fact, it's a weird one because it was actually announced on the question boards on Monday and Tuesday.

The news really kind of broke and everybody jumped on it. And Alan, NBC, cosmic log. I think he was one of the first to break the news. So he's probably more inside than I have. But they are basically in a nutshell.

I mean, this this lot of human news. It's a large as a larger comet. This can just be on the orbit of Jupiter. And what they did. Well, the astronomers did. They then looked at previous observations of the area and they were able to

deduce the comets orbital path. And it's actually going to come very, very close to the sun. Now when comets get close to the sun, of course, they produce wonderful big tails. Or that's the theory. And so just because we found a comet, a lot of people again, very excited about it.

It's going to make a near pass of the sun in the end of November 2013. So we've got some time to prepare for this. It's not going to come anywhere near Earth. I've already had a couple of emails.

You know, asking about that because obviously people get kind of scared when the comets are flying. But it's going to come about 4% of the Earth's sun distance away from the Earth. So it's not going to come close at all.

But it could put on a very big show. Now it could erupt and produce a wonderful long tail. So it would be subliming.

I mean, ISIS from the nucleus of the comet. And it could produce a very impressive show. And it's going to be a very interesting astronomical target. But it's not going to hit us.

Right. But when you say, when you say, you know, interesting and could put on a show, I mean, you're kind of underselling it, right? Because the, you know, the descriptions that I've seen is, is that, you know, if everything goes right and it does make this close call to the sun, it's going to be 15 times brighter than the full moon.

Oh, yeah, I mean, the best case scenario is this is going to be historic. I mean, the story, yeah, the brightest comet in living history ever ever. And yeah, it could be huge. But I think as soon as those headlines hit a lot of the astronomers said, hold on, you know, these are comments we're talking about. They're not, they're not a sure thing.

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