Description of October 8th Radio Show: Solar System

Already available here, below is a description of the October 8th episode of this radio show:

• News: NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander discovers snow falling in Mars's upper atmosphere, and evidence for liquid past in the soil (link; Eberswalde Crater chosen as preliminary site for NASA's next rover to Mars called Mars Science Laboratory; Mars Science Laboratory to have a computer chip to measure the wind on Mars (link); MESSENGER spacecraft flies by Mercury for a second time on October 6th (link); NASA developing sensor to allow lunar landers to automatically determine a safe landing site for future return to the Moon (link); ESA's SMART-1 mission makes 3D map on Moon's south pole (link); Hubble Space Telescope (HST) enters "safe" mode due to error in device which transmits science data to Earth, resulting in postponement of final servicing mission; 10th anniversary of Hubble Heritage Project, which distributes the prettiest pictures taken by HST; ESA's GOCE satellite has new launch date of 2008 October 27; NASA's IBEX spacecraft ready for launch on October 19; ESA's Planck satellite - the next satellite to study the Cosmic Microwave Background (listen to inteviews with Dr. Gary Hinshaw and Dr. Dan Babich for more infomation on the Cosmic Microwave Background) - almost done with final pre-launch testing; teams behind the three different proposals for NASA/DoE Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM) told to work together on a single, joint, design; European astroparticle physics list the seven major experiments they want to build (link); ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile takes highest-resolution image of Jupiter ever done from the ground; privately developed Falcon 1 rocket finally has successful launch; congratulations to Custer Institute and Observatory for receiving a Break-Thru Mini-Grant for their research and public outreach activities (for more information on their activities, listen to my interview with Dr. Jeffrey Owen Katz); congratulations to Robert Cabana for succeeding William Parsons as head of NASA's Kennedy Space Center; congratulations to teams awarded five-year grants by the NASA Astrobiology Institute (link); NASA issues new challenge for college students to design tools for next generation of Moon rovers (website); new art exhibit at Pasadena, CA's Art Center College of Design inspired by pictures taken by Spitzer Space Telescope.
• Wednesday Morning Astronomer (an Astronomer's response to the astronomy content in this ESPN column): I don't think SCP 06F6, which had 100 day long outburst of optical light, is the result of intergalactic warfare. Sorry.
• Calendar of upcoming Astronomy / Science events in the greater New York City / Poughkeepsie area.
• Solar System: So far during 2008, the Sun has produced many fewer sunspots than any other year in the last 50 years - not that surprising though; NASA's RHESSI satellite finds that Sun not a perfect sphere with the equator wider than the distance between the poles (link); changes in Sun's output of light has very SLIGHT effect on Earth's temperature (link); ESA's Venus Express mission, in orbit around Venus, has made 3D map of Venus's winds over Southern hemisphere (link); observations done by ESA's Mars Express satellites determines why Mars's Southern Polar Cap misplaced in the Martian summer- result of local weather systems; difference between Mars's Northern and Southern hemisphere (e.g. thickness of crust, number of craters) believed to be the result of ancient collision with a meteorite that essentially melted the entire northern hemisphere of Mars (link 1, link 2); astronomers at Armagh Observatory see meteorites striking Mars's surface (link); ancient Moon believed to have been rich in water; same is true for ancient Mars - though it might have lasted only a short period of time (link); might have once rained on Mars as well (link); NASA spacecrafts photograph evidence for avalanches on Mars (link); glaciers on Mars show evidence for recent climate activity (link); Mars has undergone five periods of high amounts of volcanic activity (link); atmospheres of Mars and Venus interact with the Solar wind in a similar fashion (link); graphite found in Solar System meteorites, if graphite exists in interstellar medium, could complicate using supernovae to measure the distance to galaxies - the best evidence for the existence of dark energy (link); meteorites could be the source of all the Platinum and Iridium found on Earth (link); Jupiter and Saturn may have liquid metal helium in their cores (link); Cassini spacecraft makes a 3D image of the region responsible for the low-frequency radio emission emitted by Saturn (link); Saturn's moon Titan keeps some of Saturn's magnetic field when it leaves Saturn's magnetosphere; new Pluto-like object found in outer Solar System (link); "backward-orbiting" comet discovered (link); Taiwanese-American Occultation Survey discovers no objects between 2 miles - 17 miles big inthe Kuiper Belt - suggests they either broke apart in collisions or stuck together to form bigger objects.

Hope you enjoy, and thank you very much for listening!