This past weekend, the Houston Symphony launched its extraordinary marriage of performing art and science with the world premiere of a high-def version of Gustav Holst’s early 20th century classic, The Planets. The ambitious project orchestrated by Sundance-acclaimed, British filmmaker Duncan Copp (also an astrophysicist who is one of the world’s experts on the volcanology of Venus) melds never-before-seen NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory footage of our solar system sampled from deep-space missions, culled by a series of spacecraft — Cassini-Huygens to Voyager, plus the Mars rovers and the Hubble Space Craft. After debuting at Jones Hall last Thursday, tonight is the Carnegie Hall performance, before the HS travels this planetary plethora to the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach (Saturday January 30), finishing with a flourish at the Broward Center in Ft. Lauderdale this Sunday, January 31. If ever there was an argument for NASA funding, this is it. Can we get this piece in front of Congress? (And stay tuned: Word's out that there's a CBS Sunday Morning profile of The Planets in the works.) SHOWN: JUPITER AND IO, COPYRIGHT NASA/JPL.