Carnival of Space #75

The Big Tent Edition of the Carnival of Space is live over at Lounge of the Lab Lemming, so go visit the sideshows.

And while I'm posting links, here's some new stuff on this website

Amir Alexander wrote last week about the signing of the NASA Authorization Bill. There's some good stuff in there -- for example Congress directed NASA to carry on funding planetary astronomy at the world's largest radio telescope, Arecibo (something the Society has been advocating). These sorts of directives are not binding on NASA, though, so we're going to have to keep our eyes on that one.

Mark Gelfand contributed an update on the testing of the Phobos LIFE capsule, which The Planetary Society's members are funding for flight to Mars and back on Russia's Phobos Grunt sample return capsule. The capsule will contain a variety of different Earth microorganisms; the goal is to see whether they survive years spent with little protection from the radiation environment of interplanetary space, and what kinds of damage they sustain during the trip.

This week's Planetary Radio features Sean Solomon on the second flyby of Mercury by MESSENGER; last week's featured Linda Spilker with an update on the latest from the Cassini mission to Saturn.