This Week: The Search for Life on Other Planets Widens

In 2013, the Kepler spacecraft, which had spotted hundreds of planets orbiting nearby suns, experienced the catastrophic failure of the sensitive devices that pointed the telescope at its distant targets. It looked like this remarkable mission was coming to a dismal end. But NASA engineers found a workaround and gave Kepler a second life. And this week, scientists announced the results of that second life - the detection of more than a thousand new extra-solar planets, and many new targets for the search for life elsewhere in our galaxy.

Plus - the connection between dung beetles and dinosaurs; and new evidence for the earlier arrival of the first peoples in North America

Click here for the full episode; individual segments; streaming audio, MP3 downloads, and related lnks