Visiting missions in the Clean Room with the head of NASA this week on planetary radio. Welcome to the Travel Show that takes you to the Final Frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society.

Join Emily Lochuola and me as we've I'm at Kaplan of the Planetary Society.

Join Emily Lockwala and me as we look in on two missions that will reveal vital information

about our home planet.

We'll talk to some of the people behind Smap and Rapid Scat, and then we'll throw a few questions

at the NASA administrator Charles Bolden.

First though, our regular conversation with Bill Nye, the Science Guy.

Bill, I guess we have to bit a fond farewell to Kepler,

or at least to its planet-finding days.

Yeah, it doesn't aim accurately enough anymore

because the reaction wheels gyroscopes used to point it

isn't working very well. It's really an extraordinary thing. You get this spinning

mass driven by an electric motor powered by solar panels and you use it to point this very

massive telescope precisely at stars so you can observe a slight darkening as a

planet goes in front of it's amazing she's wore out her

bushings is war moving parts in space just not a great thing well you got to have a

few yeah if you're gonna run a rocket motor you got to have a few. Yeah.

If you're going to run a rocket motor,

you got to open a valve somewhere.

But still, an enormously successful mission.

Oh, man, it's just fantastic.

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