The Planetary Society

You really want people in charge with experience.

Just to talk about the Planetary Society, yet again, on our board is Scott Hubbard, who became the Mars czar.

And NASA.

Yeah.

Oh, ASMR style.

So, many years ago, the Planetary Society caught notice of me.

They, co-founded by Carl Sagan, have a mission to promote the public's understanding and appreciation of space exploration, especially that of the planets.

I was invited to join the board of the Planetary Society.

That's when I met Bill Nye.

He was a member of the board.

That's where I met Ann Druyan.

Ann is the widow of Carl Sagan, who founded the Planetary Society.

In 2005, the B612 Foundation asked NASA to consider putting a tracking transponder on it.

In 2007, the Planetary Society ran a $50,000 design contest for a mission to Apophis.

It drew 37 entries from 20 countries.

In 2009, Russia's space agency said it would study a deflection mission.

So, um, also, uh, just, this reminds me of something, and I don't know how many people know this.

I know this because I'm a member of the planetary society and, uh, you know, science, science, love science.

Science is great.

It's one of my favorite things.

orbit is full of junk now.

Yeah.

And the Planetary Society helped develop a device.

It wasn't described as to what kind of device it was.

The farthest driving robot on any world beyond Earth, this week on Planetary Radio.

I'm Sarah Al-Ahmed of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond.

NASA's Perseverance rover has driven farther than any vehicle has ever traveled on the surface of another world.

To celebrate, we're revisiting a 2021 conversation between Matt Kaplan, the creator of Planetary Radio and senior communications advisor at the Planetary Society, and Vandi Verma, a principal engineer and deputy section manager for mobility and robotics at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

They talk about AutoNav, the self-driving system that helped make this record possible, and the amazing robotics behind the rover's sample collection.

We'll also wish a happy 25th anniversary to NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter.

Happy anniversary, Odyssey.

You continue to amaze us.

[gentle music] Meet the winners of The Planetary Society's 2026 STEP Grants, this week on Planetary Radio.

I'm Sara El-Ahmed of The Planetary Society with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond.

This week, we're featuring the winners of The Planetary Society's 2026 Science and Technology Empowered by the Public Grants, or STEP Grants.

All three of this year's winners are building tools to help us better understand the small bodies of our solar system, from near-Earth asteroids to the icy worlds beyond Neptune.

I'll be speaking with a team at Lowell Observatory in Arizona, building a new kind of polarimeter to measure asteroid sizes, then with a researcher in the Canary Islands creating a shared database for asteroid observations, and an astronomer in Germany scaling up an occultations prediction system for the age of the Vera Rubin Observatory.

If you love Planetary Radio and wanna stay informed about the latest space discoveries, make sure you hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcasting platform.

By subscribing, you'll never miss an episode filled with new and awe-inspiring ways to know the cosmos and our place within it.

Every two years, The Planetary Society funds researchers through our STEP Grants, Science and Technology Empowered by the Public.

NASA's contributions include the Megane gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer.

They also include a pneumatic sampler built by Honeybee Robotics, a technology the Planetary Society helped develop.

NASA will curate about 15 percent of the returned material in Houston.

NASA's Mars Sample Return Program was effectively canceled after Congress halted its funding.

know his ghost isn't doing any.

And it was at the Planetary Society in Pasadena and I lived in Burbank at the time.

Okay.

And I was going to go alone.