Hello, and welcome to Cape Canaveral in Florida.
This is Kennedy Space Center, where, 50 years ago,
Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins
blasted off aboard Apollo 11.
And on July 20th, 1969, Neil and Buzz became
the first humans to walk on the moon.
It's very pretty out here.
Tonight, we're celebrating that anniversary.
But also looking forward.
Because right now, here, new spacecraft are being designed,
built and launched, with the ultimate aim of bringing
astronauts back to the moon, to Mars, and even beyond.
Over the next 90 minutes, we'll be revealing the future
of human space travel.
I'm Brian Cox, he's Dara O Briain, and this is Stargazing.
"Come to Florida," they said!
"It's the Sunshine State!"
We're in a gale.
It's the curse of Stargazing weather, isn't it?
We just bring... We're like rain gods,
we bring the bad weather with us.
This is Cape Canaveral launch complex 41.
The reason it's so windy is we're right at the very top
of the crew's access tower, and if you have the nerve to look
down there, which I do not, you'll see the launchpad itself,
a launchpad with a glorious history.
This launchpad is part of the Cape Canaveral spaceport
in eastern Florida.
It's spread across over 200 square miles.
In the centre are the rocket factories and science labs,
while the launchpads are scattered along the coastline about four miles
to the east.
From here, over 400 people have blasted into space,
and 24 to the moon.
Well, the other benefits, by the way, of being at this height,
we can see the entire Florida coast.
We can see the North Atlantic, and all around us in the distance,
you can see more and more launchpads.
There are five active pads here.
This is America's busiest spaceport.
Yeah, and I must say, this is probably the second most
iconic launchpad here, because the most iconic has got
to be that one. Can you see that? The black tower in the distance.
That is where Apollo 11 launched 50 years ago.
On tonight's programme
we'll explore the three key stages of a space mission.
Blasting off from planet Earth...
RADIO: Houston, we see you, over.
..living in the hostile environment of space...
..and finally, landing on an alien world.
RADIO: That's one small step for man...
We'll be joined by Apollo legend Charlie Duke.
We are go, sit tight, we are go.
He'll tell us what it was like to guide Neil Armstrong
and Buzz Aldrin to the lunar surface.
And as Nasa once again prepares for crewed missions,
we'll look at the exciting future of space exploration.
Medic and astrophysicist Doctor Kevin Fong
attempts the latest in spacewalking technology.
I've just fallen off the Space Station.
And mathematician Doctor Hannah Fry
test-drives a future Mars buggy.
Crab out of a crater!
One of the things about being at the top of the tower
like this is you get a real sense of what it
must be like for an astronaut to take those final earthbound steps
before entering a tiny capsule
sitting on top of a 50 metre rocket
with enough power in it to lift them off the planet
and into the blackness of space.
And during the first part of this programme,
we will be examining that monumental effort that's required to create
a successful liftoff.
Could you see yourself doing that?
Honestly, I couldn't fit into the capsules on Apollo.
They're made for the small... All astronauts are, like, that tall.
But now, interesting, yeah, maybe, maybe there's been...
Maybe they're built for the bigger man now.
Well, the most famous launch of all, I suppose, was 50 years ago,
Apollo 11.
Apollo 11, this is launch operations manager.
The launch team wishes you good luck and Godspeed.
At 6:52 on the morning of the 16th of July, 1969,
Commander Neil Armstrong,
lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin
and command module pilot Michael Collins...
..took the lift to the top of the Saturn V rocket to climb
aboard their Apollo spacecraft.
RADIO COMMS: Roger, they're running on idle power. OK.
Whilst the world waited, the astronauts and ground control
teams ran through systems checks.
RADIO COMMS: Stand by for S4V.
Stand by for S4V, the COI capability.
It had taken nine years, 400,000 engineers,
scientists and technicians and an estimated £88 billion
to get to this point.
RADIO COMMS: T -15 seconds, guidance is internal.
12, 11, 10, 9...
At exactly 9:31am, the main engines ignited.
Zero! All engines running.
Liftoff, we have a liftoff!
Burning nearly 3 million litres of hydrogen and oxygen,
the 111 metre Saturn V rocket broke free of Earth's gravity.
RADIO COMMS: Neil Armstrong reporting the roll and pitch
programme, which puts Apollo 11 on a proper heading.
The first key step in Neil, Buzz and Michael's
historic journey to the moon.
Today, this launchpad is home to commercial space company
United Launch Alliance.
From here, they launch satellites and space probes
on uncrewed rockets.
Well, this pad has now been upgraded for human space flight,
and I think it is very exciting to imagine that at some point
later this year, astronauts may be stood in this very spot,
about to board Boeing's new CST-100 Starliner spacecraft.
I'm going to show you slightly more of a geographical rundown,
because we very rarely get this level of access.
It's fairly straightforward.
There's a lift, a solid, shockproof lift.
There's a toilet, not so much for the astronauts,
because that is quite a palaver to get them out of the suit.
This walk is the iconic slow-motion to music walk that astronauts make.
They'd walk through this, and there's an arm that would swing
from here out to the capsule.
That arm now is swung inside, so we can actually go into it.
This is the equivalent, I suppose, of the jetway,
when you board your plane.
This is the equivalent of it in space terms,
and it leads to an incredibly special place called The White Room.
The White Room is the last room the astronauts will see,
the last place on Earth the astronauts will see
before they take off.
Some of the information here is very, very fundamental.
This is the countdown, obviously.
That shows how long until the liftoff occurs.
This red phone is a direct line to launch control.
The yellow phone, in a slightly more kind of touching way,
is for the astronauts to ring their families one last time.
And then they get suited up, or finished their preparations,
and placed into their capsule.
The man who'd be looking after all of that is Dane Dreftly.
You are the chief of the tower crew. Am I right?
Yes. Yes. Tower Chief, Blue Team Lead is my official title.
This White Room is very, very important, because this,
this is it, this is the last contact we have with them.
Yes, it is. How long is the process?
It's a four-hour process from the time we get the rocket
fully fuelled and ready for the process to begin loading
the astronauts, and my team will be the first to arrive,
we'll be the first ones in.
We will configure this whole room to get ready for the crew.
And the last to arrive will be the astronauts?
Correct, yes.
So there'll be five people here inside the White Room,
helping the astronauts get into the capsule,
configuring everything, and then my crew, including myself,
will be three. We'll be standing by outside, overseeing
the entire operation.
Before launch, the astronauts take turns to wee on the bus,
the back wheel of the bus. You're familiar with this tradition?
I am familiar with that tradition, yes.
Is there the opportunity to establish brand-new traditions?
Yes. We are, you know, the steely-eyed missile men,
we're kind of superstitious in many ways. Yeah.
And the rituals that we've established
I still do every time.
So the last thing I do is I give it a little,
you know, pat on the very top of the nose cone and say,
"Let's go, people." Yeah, so...
Does it have any bearing on reality?
No, absolutely not, but it certainly makes me feel better.
Lovely. Very, very good.
Dane, thank you very much.
Five and a half miles from Dane's launch tower,
on the other side of the Cape Canaveral site,
lies a building that houses one of the most famous
rockets ever built -
the machine that propelled astronauts to the moon,
the Saturn V.
Nothing prepares you for the scale of this thing.
This is the only rocket ever to have taken astronauts
beyond Earth orbit.
These five F1 engines are the most powerful rocket engines ever flown.
They burn through 15 tonnes of rocket fuel every second at liftoff.
The fuel pumps alone are more powerful than a 747 flying
down the runway, and that's what you need to lift this
3,000-tonne spacecraft off the ground.
Now, in this fuel tank, there are 2,000 tonnes of
rocket fuel, and those F1 engines
burn through it in about two and a half minutes,
at which point, the spacecraft is at an altitude of around 38 miles.
The fuel is exhausted, so you don't need the first stage
any more, and so it's jettisoned,
falls away, leaving the second stage of the Saturn V.
In this case, five engines again, but a little bit smaller.
It's their job to take the spacecraft from an altitude
of 38 miles to around 114.5 miles.
And they do that by burning through a second tank of rocket fuel.
Now, after about six minutes or so, the fuel in this tank is also
exhausted, and so the second stage is no longer necessary,
and so it too falls away.
The spacecraft is then almost in orbit, but not quite.
And so a single engine on the third stage takes over.
Now, this engine burns to take the speed of the moon ship,
which is this piece, for about 17,500 miles per hour,
at which point this is in orbit.
Then the spacecraft continues to orbit the Earth until everybody's
convinced it's working properly, and then the single engine ignites
one last time to take the moon ship to 24,500 miles per hour,
and it's on its way to the moon.
So, this is what you need to launch this, which is pretty much
the smallest ship you can imagine.
The minimum spaceship, if you like, to take three astronauts
to the moon, and bring them back again.
But what would it have been like to sit on top of this?
Well, luckily, we're joined by a man who can tell us exactly that,
the lunar module pilot for Apollo 16 and tenth man to walk
on the moon, General Charlie Duke.
Thank you very much. Charlie, lovely to meet you.
Nice to see you, hi. All right. How are you? Nice to see you, Charlie.
What, how was the ride, basically, in a vehicle like this?
Well, at liftoff, it was real shaky, which surprised me.
I didn't remember anybody telling me it was supposed to shake as much as it did,
but you can imagine, the vehicle is 110 metres long.
You are sitting on that far end, and these engines that you see here
are moving, and as they move, that vibration goes up the launch,
the stack, if you will.
And when it hits the spacecraft, it's a real big vibration.
I found out later at liftoff, I was so excited, my heartbeat
was 144 at liftoff.
And I was really excited, man, I'm on my way.
You know, we trained for two years for this moment.
I can't believe that nobody mentioned, you're Apollo 16,
nobody mentioned the shaking?
Well, it's... Each vehicle had its own character, if you will.
And I think ours was a little bit more, and I can't tell you why,
and I'm sure that we talked about it, but it didn't register.
Right. Apollo 16 was your first flight into space.
So, when all that drama is over, after only, what is it,
12 or 13 minutes, and you're in orbit, what is that like?
Well, let me say, we orbited the Earth one and a half times,
and over Australia, we left Earth orbit to go ahead to the moon.
And then after that, we turned our spaceship around,
and there was the Earth, just suspended in the blackness of space out there.
You could see the Arctic Circle and those white-brown of the land,
and the blue of the ocean, suspended in the blackness of space.
It's breathtaking to see that for the first time.
Yeah, that must be very powerful, because there are very few people
who've seen the whole Earth. Only 24 of us!
The 24 men who went to the moon in Apollo
have seen it with our own eyes, that whole circle of the Earth.
Astronauts in Earth orbit see a lot of beautiful curvatures,
but they can't see the whole of the Earth.
Charlie's trip to the moon started from here,
in Cape Canaveral.
RADIO: We have a liftoff.
The Saturn V lifting off the ground ploughs ahead,
building up thrust. We've cleared the tower.
But in 2011, Nasa retired the last of its spacecraft that could carry people into orbit.
Since then, astronauts have had to fly from a Russian base.
But now, Nasa and a group of commercial companies
have been working to change that.
Aerospace company Boeing is building the Starliner spacecraft,
right here on site.
It will fly on top of an Atlas V rocket,
which currently takes satellites and space probes into orbit.
When finished, it will fly up to seven astronauts per flight
to the International Space Station,
a laboratory in space that has been continuously occupied
for 18 years by astronauts and cosmonauts.
Another commercial company, Elon Musk's SpaceX, is also working
to take people there by the end of the year.
They have developed pioneering self-landing rockets.
This make them re-usable, and means they have slashed the cost
of getting cargo into space.
RADIO: Two, one, zero, ignition, liftoff!
In March 2019, the company successfully tested their
Crew Dragon spacecraft, which flies on top of their
self-landing Falcon rocket.
RADIO: Mission copy, vehicle is centred.
This unmanned test proved it could dock with
the International Space Station, a major milestone.
But in April, disaster struck, when during an unmanned test,
the Crew Dragon spacecraft exploded on the launchpad.
MISSION TESTERS GASP
No, no!
Investigating the cause will mean delays.
While commercial companies are looking to take people
to the Space Station, Nasa's focus is deep space.
It's building the Orion spacecraft to take people back to the moon,
and eventually onto Mars.
Orion will be carried by a new rocket, known as
the Space Launch System, or SLS.
It's being assembled at Nasa's Michoud base
and, once completed, will tower to a height of 111 metres.
Its engines will propel four astronauts to over 25,000 mph -
the speed needed to escape Earth's gravity.
Right now, those engines are being tested at a unique Nasa facility.
Doctor Kevin Fong has been to investigate.
I'm on my way to Hancock County in Mississippi,
in search of Nasa's most secluded site.
It's buried in the forest, far away from any town,
because it really has to be.
At John C Stennis Space Center, a team of engineers is preparing
to test fire an engine that will power the space launch system SLS rocket.
Despite the fact it will be the biggest rocket ever built,
they're planning to use second-hand engines.
This is an RS25 engine, and it's a marvel of engineering.
The job of this engine is to move liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen,
burning it, developing enough temperature and pressure to eject
from this nozzle at 9,600 mph, and that generates enough thrust
to get the next generation of exploration vehicle
into deep space.
Standing at 4.3 metres tall, and weighing around four tonnes,
the RS25 has been Nasa's workhorse for more than 30 years.
RADIO: We are go for main engine start.
We have main engine start.
It powered every one of the 135 space shuttle launches.
But its next job will be far tougher.
To lift the SLS' enormous weight, Nasa's engineers have two solid
rocket boosters working alongside the RS25 engines.
And they'll need to push the RS25s beyond anything they've done before.
The aim of today's test is to run the engine
past its proven maximum thrust, to 113% for 510 seconds.
This is how long four RS25 engines will have to burn in unison
to put the SLS safely into orbit.
But pushing a rocket engine this hard is risky.
The early history of uncrewed rockets shows just how easily
things can go wrong.
The test is being carried out on Stennis' A1 test stand.
Towering at 60 metres tall, there's a further 60 metres
of concrete and steel below ground to anchor the stand firmly in place,
and stop the engine launching into the air.
So we're on the build-up to the test now.
In the background there is a team of engineers,
making sure that it's running correctly, and at any moment,
if anything looks wrong, if any of the pressures
are out of range, if any of the flows look wrong,
they will stop this test.
SIREN BLARES
That was a 60-second siren, so let's just stand by and watch
what's going to happen.
Here we go!
So, I've seen several shuttle launches from two miles away.
I've never been this close to a rocket firing,
and it really is quite something!
I can feel that in my chest.
We are half a mile away from this...
..and you just can't help but get a sense of
the enormous power involved here.
The engineers are looking for anything out of the ordinary,
like small deformations in this, the engine nozzle,
that could lead to the engines exploding.
Just imagine what it would be like to be an astronaut,
sitting on top of four of those engines!
The only fuel is hydrogen and oxygen,
so those clouds are superheated water vapour.
Nearly there. We are within seconds of a successful test.
And the silence is suddenly deafening.
That is the end of the test.
We've had official word that that was 510 seconds of good firing.
This is an RS25 engine working the way that it should work.
All-essential step on the road to the next generation of mission.
At the start of the moon programme, Nasa faced a problem,
because the giant Saturn V rockets are assembled
in that building, the vehicle assembly building,
and they have to be carried from there to the launchpad,
which is over there, about three and a half miles
in that direction, over Florida swampland.
And the solution they came up with was to construct the largest
self-powered vehicle ever constructed at the time.
And it's this. It's called the crawler.
After Apollo, the crawlers were refitted...
..to continue their iconic role of transporting the space shuttle.
A task they've performed for 135 missions.
And in a couple of years, they are due to begin work again
carrying the SLS rocket on the first step of its eventual
journey back to the moon.
I'm under the belly of the beast with crawler project manager
John Giles. Hello, John, how are you?
I'm fine. This is an incredible machine.
Do you think of this as a car or a tank or what?
A cross between a tank,
a ship, a locomotive.
It's a lot of pieces of equipment involved.
It's a fairly unique piece of hardware. It's very unique.
But it is slightly complicated, the fact that even though this looks
lovely and flat, most of the journey isn't done completely flat.
That's true.
It would be wonderful if it was flat the whole way,
but these river rock that we ride on are very uneven,
and then once we go up the elevation to the pad,
then we're obviously going up a five degree incline.
OK, so hang on, I'm sorry, a five degree incline with a rocket
on top is pretty severe. That's absolutely correct.
So, what we do is we have a levelling system on board,
and any time the crawler gets out of level,
and it senses that, we will automatically send
hydraulic fluid to one of the corners there,
one of our jacking equalisation and levelling cylinders,
and we'll bring that side up and down,
so we stay level all the time.
How much of a give can you possibly have?
How much can you be off? Oh, it's... it's in the very small inch range.
An inch? Yes. I'm sorry, in this entire area here, will no more,
at any time, be an inch higher on one side than the other?
An inch or two is what we strive for. Wow, that's incredible.
And the other thing, of course, often it isn't the rocket
itself that it's carrying, but it's also carrying the rocket
and the launchpad. So, yes.
We'll either carry, like, during the shuttle days,
we would carry a mobile launch platform, with a shuttle on top.
But for the new programme, for the new SLS programme,
we'll have a mobile launch tower. Yes, and that would be on top of us.
Weighs in 10-11 million pounds.
And then we will throw an SLS launch vehicle on top of that.
On top of that, right?
Is this the easiest way to do this?
Or is this a piece of engineering that felt like the easiest way
back in the 1950s and '60s?
We have been doing it for over 50 years,
and if there was something better, we would've tried it.
As big as we do things here, we need to do it in a very large way.
Yes, you do. When you go to the SLS, will this still be enough,
or do you need to...? This is it right here.
We actually upgraded this.
When this was designed back in the 1960s for Apollo,
we only had to lift 12 million pounds.
So, when they decided we were going to go and transform
to SLS, they said, "Well, we have a new requirement for you,
"it has to work for 18 million pounds."
So we spent three to four years modifying the bearings,
our hydraulic cylinders, our gel system.
We put a new onboard generator, we put new brakes on it.
We strengthened the steel inside of our trucks.
We did quite a few mods, to make sure it can handle
18 million pounds. OK, fair enough.
Thank you very much, John.
On July 16th, 1969,
just 12 minutes after liftoff,
Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin
and Michael Collins entered a new phase of their journey...
..as they manoeuvred into Earth orbit.
After one and a half laps of the Earth,
they turned the Apollo 11 spacecraft towards the moon,
and began their journey to this alien world.
RADIO: Roger, Houston, Apollo 11.
They navigated by the stars, in a spacecraft that had less computing power than a mobile phone.
For three days, the astronauts lived,
worked and ate within the six cubic metres of their Apollo capsule.
We've got all kinds of good stuff.
We've got chicken stew here.
All you have to do is three ounces of hot water
for five or ten minutes.
Neil, Buzz and Michael's lives were entirely in the hands
of the Apollo spacecraft's life-support systems.
In the next part of the programme, we'll explore what it takes
to survive in the vacuum of space.
Roger, Houston. Apollo 11, calling in from about 130,000 miles out.
And we'll reveal the latest spacecraft being built right now,
to make life in space a reality.
We've moved now to the very heart of the Kennedy Space Center.
Just behind us is the very famous vehicle assembly building.
From floor to roof, the highest single storey
in any building in the world.
At one stage, so huge that clouds would form in the higher
parts of it, and it would rain down onto it.
But it had to be that big, didn't it?
You know, you don't get a sense of the scale of it on telly,
but when I tell you you could fit four Saturn V rockets in there,
and also the space shuttles were assembled in there,
you get some sense of the scale of the thing.
Behind us now is a building that was originally used
for the refurbishing of shuttles between flights.
You can see that from the shape of the door.
You can see where the wings would be, coming out of there.
In there, however, now, they're building the next generation
of American spacecraft, and we have been given unprecedented access to look around.
Yeah, as the first capsule neared completion,
I was allowed in there to a spacecraft assembly line.
How cool is that?! I'm going to say it again.
A spacecraft assembly line, to see production in action.
For almost 40 years, Nasa has been concentrating
on missions close to home,
like building and running the permanently occupied
International Space Station.
Now Nasa's focus is on deep space missions -
flying to the moon and Mars, and hopefully beyond.
And the strategy is to subcontract out near-Earth orbit operations
to commercial companies, and that's why Boeing has built
this spacecraft factory here at Kennedy.
With a contract worth over $4.7 billion,
they've been designing a brand-new spacecraft from scratch
to fly on top of an Atlas V rocket.
This is Starliner -
Boeing's vision of a new age of space travel.
Lewis. Hi, how are you doing?
I'm very good, thank you.
Lewis Aitchison is the chief engineer for Starliner's
launch and recovery systems.
It's an incredibly exciting time here.
We have two of our test vehicles coming together right now.
Over here, this is our paddleboard test vehicle,
also known as Spacecraft 1.
Spacecraft 2, which isn't here, is out in the factory right now
getting tested in El Segundo, and that's Spacecraft 3.
That'll actually be the first vehicle
that we have on the Starliner programme that'll fly in space.
The three Starliner spacecraft currently in production
all have different roles.
Spacecraft 1 is a stripped-down vehicle that will be used
to test the abort engines that will fire to pull astronauts to safety
if there is a problem during launch.
Spacecraft 2 is a proving ground for construction techniques,
and will eventually fly the first astronauts.
And Spacecraft 3 is nearing completion -
it's due to be the first to fly on a mission to
the International Space Station on an uncrewed test flight in August.
So this is a great view of the capsule, actually,
because I suppose not many people see it without the outer skin.
You can see the bits, the functioning objects
in the capsule. Yeah, absolutely.
So, what's the...? Can you talk us through it?
What is the black square there, and the...?
Sure, so what you're kind of looking at right now is our window.
Off on the other side of the vehicle would be the hatch.
You'll see quite a bit of harness for both either avionics
or plumbing for the propulsion system.
Up towards the top, what we would have is our Nasa docking system.
Once you get on orbit, you'll be docking to the Space Station
up through the top, and that's called the IVA hatch.
And that's how the astronauts will get in and out of the International Space Station.
Their plan is the astronauts will be using that hatch
within the next 12 months.
Boeing's contract with Nasa is to deliver four astronauts
per flight to the International Space Station.
Preparations are already advanced.
And to find out what it's like to fly the Starliner,
we sent Doctor Hannah Fry to Houston, Texas.
Deep within Johnson Space Center is building nine,
where astronauts prepare for space.
Since the 1980s, every single Nasa astronaut has walked
along this floor and climbed into one of these mock-up space vehicles.
And the thousands of hours that they spend in these trainers
is absolutely essential.
Every procedure has to be practised and perfected
until it's second nature.
And today, I get to have a go.
One of the first people to fly Starliner when it launches in 2020
will be astronaut Sunita Williams.
She's a veteran of the space shuttle, and Soyuz capsule.
I was interested to see if she had a preference.
Both are different, right?
The shuttle is like a pick-up truck.
You know, we were in the middle of the construction of the space
station, and then the Soyuz is more like a little sports car.
This will be our newer sports car, so it'll be a lot of fun
to fly this one.
So, first open the hatch.
Right here, and there it is.
Put your hands, put your legs, and then put your butt...
..right over here. OK.
And then scoot yourself right in.
Now just keep coming over. Wow.
It's actually bigger on the inside than it looks.
The Starliner can carry up to seven astronauts in relative comfort.
How does this compare to the Soyuz when you're inside it?
It's nice to have a big old window right here.
Do you not have one in Soyuz?
We have little windows on the side, but this is a nice window
where you can actually look at the Space Station
as you're coming close to it.
Soyuz is an amazing spacecraft, but this is a step up.
You feel like, also, everything is right in front of you,
right where you can reach it.
It's not spread way out around the cockpit
like the shuttle is. It was extremely huge,
and one person couldn't drive it.
This one actually, one person is supposed to be able
to do everything, that's all because of the automation that's
involved into this very modern spacecraft.
And how does it feel knowing that you're going to be one
of the first people to fly this thing?
It's cool. It's really exciting.
I mean, I feel very vested in it, and I feel, you know,
talking to all the engineers and people and technicians
who are putting it together, I feel super confident with it, too.
So I'm psyched.
I'm about to find out what it will be like to fly
Starliner, in a craft used to train the astronauts.
One of the critical procedures they must all learn
is how to dock with the ISS.
Simulator designer Jim Keil will put me through my paces.
The first thing we will do is turn on manual control.
That's this one up here? Up?
Yes. It is a live joystick now.
You will push it in the direction you want the spacecraft to go.
So if you want to move forward, you're going to push it straight in.
So let's go ahead and push it straight in.
During a real-life docking, both Starliner and the ISS
will be hurtling around the Earth at 17,500 miles per hour.
Under normal circumstances it would be computer-controlled,
but astronauts must be able to take over if something goes wrong.
This pink circle is your target. OK?
So, actually, this is quite like you are getting these discrete bursts.
Yes, it is pulses of the thrusters,
as opposed to pushing the gas pedal on a car. OK.
In the past, astronauts were confronted with a mind-boggling array of switches.
Apollo and Soyuz had hundreds,
and the Space Shuttle had about 3,000.
Starliner's cockpit has been simplified,
reducing the number to around 50.
Fewer buttons means fewer switches that a crew member has to memorise and know how to use.
That is fewer distractions while they are actually trying to get their job done.
The streamlining of Starliner's cockpit means that I am able
to control the entire docking process through a single hand controller.
And the screens in front of me don't just show me where I am now -
they also show me where I'll be in a few seconds' time...
..making the docking process more intuitive.
OK, so, we are getting close. Coming up to the 1m mark.
Although you are hurtling around the Earth around 17,500 mph, 20,000 kph.
Relative to the Space Station, we want about, you know, that 4cm, a few inches per second.
That's absolutely mad. Yeah, it's a highly choreographed dance.
But we'd like to keep both the Space Station and Starliner
intact when we dock. OK.
All right, when you get to the middle point,
let's go ahead and give it upward pulse. Upward.
We have got contact. Ooh!
And capture! Hey, successful docking.
So, how far off was I?
You were under a centimetre from the centre.
I think that's just an excellent display of skill, then.
I think so.
Parking's generally not my forte, but I did just manage to dock
at the ISS successfully without mucking it up.
So, pretty pleased with myself.
Although I suspect it says a lot more about how well
they've streamlined the controls, and simplified the process to make
it instinctive, than it does my skills as an astronaut.
Not only have Boeing worked to make sure that the Starliner is as easy
as possible to pilot, Lewis Aitchison and his team
have also put a huge effort into designing this spacecraft
to be much cheaper to fly than anything that has gone before.
I think one of the big differences between this and Apollo is reusability.
The Apollo capsule, once it flew one time, that was it.
You typically see the Apollo capsules in museums after they were flown.
This particular vehicle is designed to fly up to ten times.
So, what are the design choices that mean that you can re-use it?
The biggest thing is where we land.
So, one of the neat things about this programme,
is this will be the first US capsule to land on land.
That's a really important design choice, because as you can imagine,
saltwater wreaks havoc on electronics, metal,
anything it touches, really.
The challenge of landing on solid ground instead of water
is how to soften the impact.
RADIO: And touchdown.
The Russian Soyuz capsule uses explosive retro rockets,
that fire just before touchdown
to reduce the speed at impact.
But Starliner is taking a different approach,
using a system we're familiar with in cars - airbags.
But it's not as simple as just pumping them up.
So, here is the Starliner, and it's going to land,
and here are two airbags, both at the same pressure
at the moment, and no air can escape.
The bungs - the stoppers - are in, if you like.
And so let's drop the spacecraft and see what happens.
You see?
If both airbags are inflated, and the gases,
which are the oxygen and nitrogen in this case, can't escape,
then the spacecraft bounces.
So, the solution to that was have this rather more subtle system,
and the key point is the outer airbag,
the slightly lower-pressure one, is vented.
So now, see what happens when we drop the spacecraft.
It lands, and it doesn't bounce.
And that is why this double airbag system is employed.
Starliner's new landing system has been tested rigorously.
It's been dropped from cranes...
Release!
..dropped into water...
..dropped at angles...
..even dropped from helicopters
in an attempt to make every landing
as safe as possible.
This spacecraft has only got a few months of assembly left.
They said it comes together very quickly, actually.
They just have to bolt the panels on and then it will launch
from here at Kennedy, will fly to the International Space Station,
it will dock, then it will return to Earth,
it will be refurbished, and its next flight will carry a crew into space.
Outside the capsule, space is a forbidding, hostile environment.
Everything is constantly bombarded by radiation from the sun.
The tiniest leak in a suit could be fatal.
Temperatures veer wildly from 138 degrees in sunlight,
to -173 degrees in the shade.
It is a tough place.
Yet, here on Earth, we're surrounded by air.
It's like sitting in a hot bath.
And that protects us from these temperature swings.
If the sun goes behind a cloud, we don't immediately freeze.
But in space, we're not surrounded by anything.
So if you go into the shade, the solar panel, or a space station module,
the temperature swing can be anything up to 300 degrees Celsius.
Venturing outside the protection of a spacecraft is
one of the riskiest parts of any mission.
But for routine maintenance, or in case of an emergency,
it's something astronauts must prepare for.
So, before their mission, they must all undergo around 400 hours
of spacewalk training in places like the neutral buoyancy tank,
which can get them close to the near weightless conditions of space.
But at Johnson Space Center in Houston,
they've devised a new way to simulate spacewalks.
Doctor Kevin Fong has been trying it out.
This is Nasa's most advanced astronaut training device.
Argos.
The Active Response Gravity Offload System.
It can create the sensation of weightlessness,
so astronauts can practise complex manoeuvres like spacewalks.
All right, Stell, let's go ahead and enable vertical.
Wow, here we go.
Now we have liftoff.
It's an array of computers, sensors and motors
that work together to dial out Earth's gravity.
It's much, much more difficult to control
than I imagined.
So, you're now in microgravity.
To give you a taste of what a real spacewalk might be like,
I'm going to give you a little bit of a circuit, and your mission
is to eventually get back here,
and fix this electrical junction box.
A tiny finger movement like that, I'm going to push on that finger,
and that's me going, and I'm nearly off that handle.
So, let's try and get over there.
As I try to make my way down the length of the training rig,
every movement I make is picked up by the sensors.
Motors change the tension of the cables I'm attached to,
neutralising my weight,
so I'm interacting with my surroundings as though I'm in space.
So, all these handrails are very similar to the ones
you'll see up on the Space Station.
Right. Now I need to get back down.
And so, you're expecting gravity to help you here,
but there is no gravity. You've cancelled it out, so...
You just... Every movement is you, it's all you.
Adjusting to weightlessness is difficult.
And it's all because of Newton's laws of motion.
His first law says that a moving object will keep moving,
unless something stops it.
On Earth, friction quickly slows things down.
But in the vacuum of space, there is no friction.
So unless there's something to stop me, I just keep moving.
OK, I'm going to get down.
Stop messing around.
Just as critical is Newton's third law.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
We don't usually notice this effect when we're moving
around here on Earth.
But in microgravity, even the tiniest action
has a knock-on effect on my body.
Let's get across. OK, I am at the business end.
Now I'm torn between letting go of the hose,
and letting go of the Space Station,
both of which are pretty catastrophic. There you go.
So, I think all the electricity is working again.
Good. All right, well, the Space Station is safe.
On a real spacewalk, the greatest fear is becoming
separated from the Space Station
and being lost in space.
It might be difficult to understand how easy this is to get wrong,
but if I stop now, I'm gone.
And the thing is about space is, you fall off, and you fall forever.
Just keep floating.
Making mistakes has huge consequences.
For me, I'm lucky.
My friends over there can turn gravity on any time I like.
But on a real spacewalk, it's a different story.
Astronauts are equipped with a small jetpack,
but its limited fuel means they only have one chance
to get back.
If that failed, they would keep drifting,
until their spacesuit's life-support systems shut down,
and their oxygen ran out.
Space is a brutal and unforgiving environment.
But we have built a home there.
The International Space Station is one of the greatest engineering
achievements of all time.
This laboratory has been bringing us new science for over 18 years.
On board, they've studied the effect of microgravity on everything,
from growing plants...
..to the human body.
Vital knowledge, if we are to explore
the solar system.
But the Space Station wouldn't exist without one of the most complex
spacecraft ever built -
Nasa's space shuttle, which first launched in 1981.
Five shuttles flew to space, including this - Atlantis.
And the presentation of Atlantis here, is,
for a machine this size, is nothing short of poetic.
Floating here as if in orbit.
But still, with all the bumps, scrapes and scorch marks
that it would've gained over its 33 exits from Earth,
and moreover its 33 re-entries into Earth's atmosphere.
Yeah, if you think about what this spacecraft did,
it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere at about 17,000 mph.
Those black tiles there would have glowed
about 1,600 degrees Celsius, as the frictional heating from the atmosphere slowed it down.
And we are joined by Nicole Stott, and Nicole spent 104 days in space.
And you flew on this ship as well, didn't you?
I did. It was my ride home from my first flight.
What's the primary difference between this, obviously
the scale of it, but flying on a shuttle compared to flying on a capsule?
So, the difference is that on Soyuz or some
of the new capsules coming along, you're not going to have this, like,
ginormous cargo capacity that you did on the space shuttle.
There are two rubber arms on this shuttle. Yeah.
Yeah, so this one here, the Canada arm,
is the one we used as like the primary robotic system.
So, like the big crane on the space shuttle,
and it could grab things and move stuff around.
We would have a special attachment that you could stick your feet in
and move around, and that was one of the most surreal things
that I got to do on my mission was I got to grab this,
what, on the ground, would have been like 800lb,
you know, box, off the end of the station,
and then I got flown down into the payload bay,
kind of the back end of the space shuttle, to put it in there.
I never felt like I was moving. It was like I was standing still
on the ground, and the shuttle moved out of view,
Earth moved into the view, station...
I mean, it was like everything was revolving around me, as it does, but...
Just the most peaceful, try not to fall asleep, kind of thing.
What was it like landing in this? Because it's very different.
Capsules obviously come down, they burn up,
and then there's a big thunderous impact at some point. Yeah.
It was just this graceful, peaceful,
like, movement back to the ground,
and then, you know, I always joke, that the way human beings
should land coming home from space,
with that little chirp on the runway, and the roll-out to wheel stop.
You know, it's just this really peaceful, graceful thing, coming home.
Nasa's plan now looks to me like the moon,
and then perhaps onward to Mars.
I'm a moon person. I love the fact that we're looking at the moon,
this, you know, kind of naturally purpose-built
space station in space for us already,
as a destination that's not just a destination,
but a place where we'll have a permanent settlement there.
So, the moon, it may be the moon next.
I would love to go to the moon, yeah!
Who wouldn't love to go to the moon? I mean, really!
Mars not so much, I think, but the moon, yeah, yeah.
I mean, I'm just saying, I'm very busy...
LAUGHTER Yeah. Mars is a bit of a commitment!
Nicole, a pleasure, thank you very much.
Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
Now, one thing that hasn't changed since the Apollo missions
is the need to keep astronauts in peak physical condition,
and food is a huge part of that.
But what's served to them and how it's served has changed dramatically.
We sent Kevin Fong to Houston to find out what's on the menu.
The Space Food Systems Laboratory at Nasa's Johnson Space Center
is possibly the most exclusive kitchen in the world.
Here, they use unique cooking methods to prepare meals
for just six people,
that cost over £5,000 each.
Ryan Dowdy is the Food Systems Manager
for the International Space Station.
We can't do any cooking like this in space.
Tell me why.
There's no cooking in space, and the reason for that is
because space is a very controlled environment.
If they have hot water floating around inside
the International Space Station, someone's going to get burned,
or the electronics equipment is going to get messed up.
That's why all the cooking we do for space happens right here.
They've been preparing food for space here in Houston for well over 50 years.
John Glenn became the first American to dine in orbit in 1962.
His modest meal was a sugar tablet,
water, and a tube of apple sauce.
The duration of Glenn's mission was less than five hours,
so his life didn't depend upon it.
Oh, excellent.
But today's missions to the Space Station can last up to a year.
And that means astronaut food needs to be nutritious,
and made safe to eat in space.
So, Ryan, very noisy in here.
And inside this machine, you've got the most elaborately
prepared porridge and raisins I've ever seen.
This is where we freeze-dry food to send up
to the International Space Station.
First we freeze it, and then we pull a vacuum on it,
so all the water molecules are a solid,
and they evaporate out into a gas.
So it pulls all the moisture out of the foods in about
a week-long process.
Foods are about 90% water,
so you see about a 90% weight reduction in the food
as it's freeze-dried.
And so this isn't fundamentally about making the food cold,
it's about making it dry and removing the moisture,
so that doesn't allow any bacteria to grow.
It's pulling the water out of it,
so the food can last a long time at room temperature.
So, the key to stabilising food for space is reducing the risk
of bacterial growth, while keeping its nutritional value.
ASTRONAUT: Coming out pretty well, there. There we go.
In space, the amount of weight that the bones must support
is reduced to almost zero, and this causes them to weaken.
So a diet containing calcium and vitamin D is even more important
than on Earth, to help maintain bone strength.
Low gravity can also reduce the number of astronauts'
oxygen-carrying red blood cells, so they don't need as much iron
in their diet.
Excess iron can cause nausea and vomiting,
and, if left unchecked, could damage the liver and heart.
So, carefully tailored nutrition is essential.
But what about the flavour?
One of the crew-member favourites is the shrimp cocktail.
Let's give it a try. OK... OK.
So, what we're going to do here is take 75 ml of cold water,
so the freeze-dried shrimp will take the water,
become reconstituted.
Let's give it a go. So, scissors across here.
There's a bit of me that's a little bit hesitant about this!
Mmm!
That is actually pretty good.
Tastes like shrimp cocktail. Mmm. It has got a bit of a kick.
You can taste the horseradish in that. Mm-hm.
I remember the astronaut crews saying that they like stuff
with a bit of heat, because they have trouble tasting
anything, really, in orbit, because the fluid shifts
into their head, makes their noses a bit stuffy,
you know, makes you feel the way you do when you have a cold,
so, sometimes tasting the food is a bit difficult.
That's right. Hot sauce, wasabi and horseradish
are all perennial favourites.
These are great, because they interact
with the trigeminal nerve in the mouth,
and they don't have to pass into the nose to be perceived.
I am impressed with your cooking skills. This is really good stuff.
Glad you like it.
Food might seem like a very small consideration
when you're looking at rockets and radiation,
but if we're going to go to the moon and beyond to Mars,
we're going to have to get this right,
because the comfort that it brings,
the boost to the crew's morale is all-important.
If we want to keep our astronauts healthy in body and mind,
getting the science of this right is going to be as essential
as any other life-support system.
Over the course of the programme, we have examined the difficulties
of lifting off from Earth
and the perils of travelling through space.
But for the Apollo 11 astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin,
the most challenging part of the mission was yet to come -
exploring a world no-one had ever set foot on.
RADIO: Eagle, everything looks good.
Eagle, Houston, everything's looking good here, over.
At 5:44 on the afternoon of the 20th of July 1969,
the lunar lander, carrying Neil and Buzz,
undocked from the Apollo command module.
Leaving Michael Collins in orbit,
the lander began its journey to the moon's surface.
Roger, copy.
Back in mission control in Houston,
Charlie Duke was helping guide the Apollo 11 team in his role as Capcom.
Go ahead, copy, over.
Capcom is an acronym - capsule communicator -
and it's the only person in mission control
that can actually talk to the crew.
We are go flight. OK, we are go. We are go, same type, we are go.
And it's always an astronaut, because the idea is you are thinking
in this same kind of operational vein that the crew is.
Can you talk to us about that landing?
Because it is safe to say it was more complicated,
the Apollo 11 landing, than it was expected to be.
Correct. There was a lot of problems developed.
And when they started descent,
it seemed like the wheels came off, if you will.
First, we had communication problems,
then all of a sudden, we had computer warnings,
computer overloads.
Programme alarm.
Give us a reading on the 1202 programme alarm.
When I saw that, I said, "We're dead in the water.
"We are not going to make it."
Roger, we got you, we are go on that alarm.
Then we pitched over at 7,000 feet,
and they saw the surface for the first time,
and apparently we had them targeted into a big boulder field, let's call it.
And so Neil had to level off at 400 or 500 feet above the surface,
and skim along the surface for a mile or two.
Holding out. 30 seconds, over.
And so now, we're approaching minimum fuel,
they still weren't on the ground,
and you can imagine the tension was through the roof in mission control.
I'd never heard it as quiet,
and I felt like we were all holding our breath.
I heard Buzz say, "Contact engine stop."
And we knew they were on the ground.
We copy you down, Eagle.
It's like punching a balloon, and all the air goes out.
And that's the way it felt in mission control.
Houston, Tranquillity Base here, the Eagle has landed.
Roger, Tw... Tranquillity, we copy you on the ground.
You've got a bunch of guys about to turn blue,
we're breathing again. Thanks a lot.
And I was so excited, I couldn't even say "Tranquillity",
it came out "Twang". LAUGHTER
You do all sound very calm, but were you going,
"What is he doing?"?
Because this was an unexpected manoeuvre at the very last minute.
Well, I'm convinced now that had we said, "Eagle abort,"
there would have been dead silence on the other end,
and it would've later on, "Say again, Houston?"
He was going to land.
And I don't blame him.
No, and you would've all done the same.
Yeah, yeah. That's it.
Neil and Buzz spent six hours prepping their spacecraft
and getting into their spacesuits.
Then came one of the most famous moments in history.
Over half a billion people around the world watched and waited
for Neil to emerge from the lunar lander.
That's one small step for man... one giant leap for mankind.
Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins and Neil Armstrong had made history.
It was nearly three years later when Charlie Duke
and Apollo 16 commander John Young followed in Neil and Buzz's footsteps.
How was your landing on the moon?
A landing on the moon, in any flight, is dynamic.
John had to really manoeuvre it, it was a very rough landing area.
Not boulders-wise, but just undulating terrain.
And so, about 4-5 feet off the moon, he shut the engine down,
and boom, we hit the ground, and six hours behind schedule,
we were on the moon, and I was so excited,
and I just screamed out, "Oh, Orion is finally here, Houston!
"Fantastic!"
And that was probably the first fantastic of 900 fantastics
during the next three days.
You loved being up on that moon.
Oh, yeah, John and I both did.
We had practised and trained with a camaraderie and a fun personality,
he had a great sense of humour.
And so, we just continued that on the moon.
You begin to come alive with the beauty of the moon,
and the pristine nature of the moon, never touched.
The thought kept occurring to me, nobody's ever stepped here before.
Very, very exciting.
And you got to drive the rover.
I got to ride the rover. John was the driver,
and my job was to navigate.
Riding on the moon is rough.
The car bounced a lot.
And the back end kept, I call fishtail, like this,
and one time we spun out -
we went into a little crater, and the car spun around 180 degrees.
How did you cope in the lower gravity?
My balance wasn't as good as John's,
I had to be a little bit more careful.
I could run right, John could actually jump up,
do a split, and go down, and pick up a rock.
And his balance was really good.
I tried that a couple of times, I never did grab the rock,
and I fell down a couple of times, so I decided maybe I ought to use
the shovel to get my rocks up.
Can the training prepare you for that experience?
Is it radically different to what you'd expected?
The training gave you the mechanics of it,
but not the wonder of it. Not the excitement of it.
Not the awe of it.
I mean, you're standing on the moon, and you are looking at the horizon,
and you look up in this blackness of space,
you can't do that on Earth.
And it was incredibly awesome to me.
One of the most beautiful deserts you can imagine.
And you kept thinking, "I'm on the moon." Yeah.
Charlie, thank you very much for coming out.
Whilst pioneers like Charlie have stood on the moon,
no human being has set foot on another planet.
But that's Nasa's long-term aim.
And it hopes to use the moon as a staging post.
The moon has one sixth of the gravitational pull of Earth,
so launching from the moon is estimated to be 20 times cheaper
than launching from Earth.
And there are teams investigating now how we can use the moon
to help us send people to Mars.
Nearly five miles south of the rocket factories,
in the corner of Kennedy Space Center,
is a lab in which they've recreated a piece of the moon's surface.
I've been invited here to try out the prototype of a fleet of robots
designed to mine the moon.
The idea is the autonomous robots would extract fuel and building
materials, working ahead of any human mission.
One stick drives one side of the wheels,
and the other stick drives the other side of the wheels.
Robotics engineer Ajay Nick
is letting me take one out for a spin.
So, we could turn on this button, and you can go ahead
and raise this arm over here.
And keep driving.
You know, there's a real feeling of stability there.
Ah!
You're confident I can't break this?
I have done way worse to this robot.
I suppose the obvious question is, if you want to mine this,
why don't you just get a shovel and dig it up?
Why is the robot so complicated?
The first problem is we're trying to make everything
as lightweight as possible, fit inside of a rocket.
Then you get there on the lunar surface,
and you have reduced gravity once you get there,
so now the thing that was already really light,
because you had to make it light to fit in the rocket,
is even lighter while it's there on Earth.
This is really some rock. Really shocked.
With one sixth of Earth's gravity,
operating on the moon creates a challenge.
OK, Houston, I'm digging exploratory trench right here.
OK, we copy that.
While the Apollo astronauts could move around with ease,
they found simple tasks like digging and collecting rocks difficult.
Current Earth terrestrial excavators actually get their excavation
force, their ability to cut through the soil,
from their weight of their vehicle.
Here, since we don't have a lot of weight, it's very difficult.
Ajay and his team have come up with a unique design
that will allow their robots to work in the moon's weak gravity.
So now, I'm digging.
The scooping drums at either end rotate in opposite directions.
This has the effect of pinning the robot to the ground,
allowing it to dig without floating off into space.
As one drum on the front is digging, the other drum is rotating
the opposite direction from the other drum,
and so, that allows the excavation forces to be cancelled,
as it's digging.
This is the only vehicle in the world that can dig
more than its own weight.
If I took it into this trench the wrong way...
Right. ..it may well fall over.
Mm-hm. Can I do that? Yeah. Oh, yep.
Unlike other planetary rovers,
these robots are meant to be robust,
designed to get themselves out of problems,
even if they're flipped upside down.
It's really easy to drive, and really manoeuvrable,
and really powerful.
And it does seem like you can get out of a lot of trouble.
Once the lunar dirt has been dug up,
it needs to be transformed into a building material.
Show you some materials here.
Senior technologist Robert Muller has been sintering the lunar dust,
heating it until it solidifies.
So, the result, a well-centred regolith, is this,
and that's essentially turning crushed rock back into solid rock.
That's really quite heavy, actually. That feels quite dense.
So that is just this material in an oven, essentially.
That's right.
By mixing the regolith with plastic, Rob can create something
far more versatile -
a material which can be used in a 3D printer.
And we use the big robot arm, we have a print head on it,
and then we're able to make objects like this,
this is a blast deflection wall.
Or this is an ogive dome, it could be used for the roof
of a habitat when it gets really big, and in fact it's quite strong.
If you look down at it, it's very strong.
You could kick it all day long, and it won't break.
That's quite remarkable. So that is built by that robot? Yes.
Using essentially the regolith that you would find on the moon?
That's correct. So, you never bring any materials from Earth.
You go mine them on the moon, and then you build whatever
you need to create your local moon base out of local materials.
All you have to bring is the robot.
Everything is there, is the point.
Everything is there.
The only two things missing are technologies and imagination.
If we can put those two things together,
and harness the materials and the energy we have in space,
we have all the resources in space we need.
We just need to be clever enough to learn how to use them.
Mars is an ambitious goal.
And one of the greatest challenges is the enormous amount of fuel
needed to propel a spacecraft to the red planet.
But this fuel could be created on the moon.
Now, you might think that synthesising rocket fuel
from material you can find on the moon or Mars is difficult,
but actually, it isn't.
It's very easy indeed, because all you need is water.
And water is made out of hydrogen and oxygen.
And they are also the first and third most abundant elements
in the entire universe.
So, water is all over the place.
We found it in the rocks of the moon's crust.
And all you have to do to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen
is put some energy in, which I can do by connecting
a battery to these two electrodes.
And I think you can see there, already, you see those bubbles
starting to form? Well, on this one, where the electrons are going in,
those bubbles are hydrogen. That's hydrogen gas.
And on this one, where the electrons are coming back out again, the anode,
those are bubbles of oxygen.
So, we've put energy in to split the water,
to make the hydrogen and oxygen, then if you put these into big
tanks, and bring them back together, and light them, you get that energy
back out again. And that is a rocket.
So, how likely is that to work?
Well, I think it's certainly going to work, it sounds
like science fiction, but I think for the first time,
we have the technology to begin to be able to make that happen.
OK, any idea how long before we can do that?
See, I dodged that.
But I would say that we have the technology now,
we have the reusable rockets, we have the robots that can do it.
We now need the will.
But if we want to start mining asteroids, or the moon,
tomorrow, then we have the technology to do it.
So it could be now. In reality, what,
20 years? If we're lucky.
That's still within our lifetime.
Nasa's next deep space mission is planned for summer 2020.
They're going to send a new rover to Mars to search for evidence
of life, and to help them get rock samples back to Earth.
Hannah went to California to find out more.
Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has sent out over 100 robotic
spacecraft across our solar system.
Voyagers 1 and 2 have flown past Jupiter and Neptune,
and are currently travelling through interstellar space.
And the famous Cassini mission imaged Saturn and its moons.
Now, Nasa's readying its next one,
which will land on our nearest neighbour.
This is the Mars 2020 Rover.
The rover's primary mission is to explore the Martian surface,
and this is the chassis that they're going to use
to test out all the various pieces of equipment.
It's all been planned with a future human mission in mind,
which means that all the information that this is going to send back
will be absolutely crucial to getting people onto the red planet.
And more importantly, back home again safely.
While this rover will be a first step to understanding how to get
back from Mars, its key mission is to study the geology and climate
of the red planet
and determine whether life existed there.
In JPL's clean room, construction of the rover
is reaching a critical stage.
And leading the flight systems team is Dave Gruel.
When is this thing going to be ready, then?
Launch date is in July of 2020, and then we are scheduled to land
on the surface of Mars in 2021.
The rover's landing site is Jezero crater.
If you look at it from the orbiters, it looks like a big river
might have flown into this area.
And when you have rivers, the hope is that by looking
at an area like this, they will get a vast array
of different types of rock samples and sand samples and things
like that that will allow them to peer through time and understand
how Mars might have formed, and how it came to be
what it is today.
Evidence of water would offer the tantalising possibility
that life may once have existed at Jezero.
And one of this rover's key tasks will be to look for it.
To achieve this, it will be loaded with tools,
and sitting at the end of a 2.1-metre arm will be the drill,
which will cut 30mm-diameter cores of Martian bedrock.
These will help provide a far more detailed picture
of the red planet's geology.
The rover can analyse the core samples collected by this drill
as it goes, but what the scientists really want to do is to get
those samples back to Earth, because we can do so much
more analysis on them here than the rover can on Mars.
This is the first mission that's part of an attempt to send material
from the red planet back to Earth.
This is one of the rover's sample collection tubes.
Whenever it drills a sample of rock, it will store it in one of these,
and seal it.
Then it labels it, sends a message back to Earth
about where it is, and leaves it on the ground.
And as the rover trundles off into the distance,
the tube waits patiently for another mission to come and collect it.
The next stage of the plan is truly audacious.
A second rover will land near the samples and collect them.
It'll then take them to a launcher, which will fire them
into orbit around Mars.
Then a third mission will rendezvous with them in orbit,
and bring them back to Earth.
And while those second and third missions are still on the drawing
board, if they succeed, it'll put us a giant step closer
to bringing astronauts back from the red planet safely.
It's become a bit of a cliche that a manned mission to Mars is only
20 or 30 years away. We've basically been saying the same thing
since the 1960s.
But projects like this one really do make that idea of having astronauts
on the red planet much more feasible.
So maybe this time, that timescale has a ring
of truth to it.
See? Finally, finally we get the weather that Florida promised,
and I'm now overdressed. So am I.
I know, it's ridiculous, actually.
Why is this planet so difficult to predict?
Sending spaceships to other planets has taught us so much
about the solar system.
So far, we've talked about exploring the moon
and Mars, but there's another alien world on our radar
for a future mission.
One of Saturn's moons, Titan, which is shrouded in dense methane
clouds, could be in line to receive its second visit
from a lander.
I'm delighted to say we're joined by a scientist
who's been involved in a series of missions at the forefront
of our discovery of how our solar systems work,
planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University
Doctor Zibi Turtle.
Thank you for joining us. Hi, my pleasure.
What is so interesting about Titan?
Titan has very rich organic chemistry.
There's energy in the form of sunlight, and there's,
in the past, been liquid water available at the surface
that the organic material can mix with, and there's also a liquid
water ocean deep in its interior.
It's the only place that comes close, in terms of organic
complexity, to our Earth.
And in that sense, it's very much like the early Earth,
and we want to understand what happens chemically,
how that chemistry progresses,
because we can't study that on Earth, because it's
over-printed by biology very effectively.
It's almost like a time machine, I suppose, isn't it?
In a sense we can go back... Yes, exactly!
..to the early Earth, see what the chemistry's like.
Exactly. Yeah.
Yeah, that's a good way of putting it.
Titan's been doing these prebiotic chemistry experiments for hundreds
of millions of years, and we want to go collect
the results of those experiments, and understand what happens
with the chemistry that eventually led to biology here on Earth.
I mean, the next plan to land on Titan is an incredibly exciting one,
because you're going to use the atmosphere to travel in a way
that we haven't any time we've landed anywhere else.
Right. So we're in the process of proposing a mission,
that mission is called Dragonfly.
So Dragonfly would be a rotorcraft, and it would be able
to use Titan's atmosphere to be able to fly from place to place.
Titan's atmosphere, surface pressure, is about one and a half
times the pressure here on Earth, but the gravity is about one seventh
the gravity here on Earth.
So it's actually easier to fly on Titan than it is on Earth,
and if we could go to Titan, right,
and we had really good, warm, woolly sweaters and some oxygen,
we'd be able to fly if we had wings.
Yeah. So it's really, you know, it's really an evocative
place to explore.
Are you prepared, by the way, to the level to which people
are going to fall in love with a hopping, flying drone
on a distant planet? We do tend to anthropomorphise...
Oh, absolutely, absolutely!
And I am... I have fallen completely in love with this idea myself.
It has been one of the features of the decade that we've been doing
Stargazing, that we've seen the results come in from things
like Cassini and Galileo and New Horizon, and it just seems
to be that the universe creates planets and moons
in a far more varied way than we ever thought.
Yeah, I think you're right.
The Curiosity rover as well on Mars, I think what we're finding
is that the potential for life beyond Earth,
we don't know, it could be that there is no life for a long way,
thousands of light years beyond Earth,
or, it could be we will answer the question,
"are we alone" in the negative, no, we are not alone,
in our solar system, which I think is the thing that most
excites me about these next missions for the next 10 or 20 years.
When the first people land on Mars, they won't have anything
as exciting as Dragonfly to travel around on,
but already now, Nasa are devising new vehicles to help them
traverse that planet.
In Houston, Hannah got to go on this new expanded form
of the moon buggy, and give it a test ride.
At over £7 million each,
the lunar rovers are the most
expensive cars ever built.
But the 56 miles that astronauts covered during Apollo 15, 16 and
17 allowed them to study a huge variety of lunar landscapes,
so they might have been the most important miles ever driven.
And now, half a century later, Nasa have built a new vehicle.
This is the Space Exploration Vehicle.
It's designed to help astronauts explore the red planet.
And today, Nasa is letting me get behind the wheel with some
very well-qualified supervision.
Hi, Hannah, welcome aboard.
Thank you.
Astronaut Doug Wheelock has flown in space twice,
logging nearly six months in orbit.
Dual controls. Dual controls.
Here is a hand controller, so you're now the pilot.
And today, he's chaperoning my test drive
of this multimillion-dollar space vehicle.
Now just twist it to the right, and keep the control in.
Whoops. It's OK.
When you initially twist it, all the wheels are going to line up...
Oh, I see. That's why we jump. ..before it starts moving.
So... OK.
Perfect. Ooh. Perfect.
Johnson Space Center's rock yard mimics the rugged terrain astronauts
might experience on the red planet.
These, some of these are quite big, it's a bit disconcerting
to watch them go under your feet. Absolutely, yes. Mm-hm.
The vehicle's joystick controls six
entirely independent pairs of wheels
that can rotate 360 degrees in either direction.
A bank of screens keeps astronauts up to speed on key information,
what each set of wheels is doing, and whether the cabin
is at a dangerous angle.
And that gives astronauts confidence to perform some
pretty impressive manoeuvres.
Straight left, and come up out of the crater.
Mm-hm. Twist and up.
Or you can just go straight left.
Crab out of a crater!
So you can see the vehicle's... it's got a very, very low centre
of gravity, so it has no problems at all.
Unlike me.
You're doing great, though.
So is this a big step up from anything that went before?
The biggest difference between this vehicle and the lunar
rovers that we took during the Apollo era
is this is a spaceship in and of itself,
and so all of our life systems are on board.
All of our supplies.
And so we can leave our base camp, if you will,
in a vehicle like this, and go out on a week-long mission,
a two-week mission.
On the moon, astronaut survival depended entirely
on their spacesuits.
So the lunar rover could only take them as far as they could walk back
in case of a breakdown.
It meant that the furthest an Apollo astronaut ever strayed
from the lunar lander was just 4.6 miles.
The Space Exploration Vehicle is effectively
a spacecraft on wheels,
so it can take astronauts much further.
Right now, our range is about 125 miles,
and we expect that to be expanded over the next several years,
as we...as we take a look at new technologies.
And that's just in a straight line. I mean, that means the area
that you can sweep out, effectively, is going to be enormous.
Absolutely, absolutely, yeah.
With the buggy's hydrogen fuel cells also providing drinking water,
the scope for exploration is vast.
The huge windows will allow astronauts to study the Martian
landscape in detail.
Steady.
Looking good.
But you can't fully explore from inside.
To collect rocks and soil samples, astronauts will need to leave
the vehicle.
Getting out of a pressurised spacecraft is quite a tricky thing
to do, so on the ISS, the astronauts had to squeeze
through this tiny airlock, and on this Space Exploration
Vehicle, that's just not something that's going to be practical.
So instead, the engineers came up with a very clever design.
The spacesuit itself is the airlock.
Combining the spacesuit and the airlock means that astronauts
can leave the vehicle in around 15 minutes,
and because the suit never enters the cabin,
the living space is protected from contamination by Martian dust.
For now, this Space Exploration Vehicle is just a prototype.
The next generation is going to need to be faster,
have better batteries, and be an awful lot lighter.
But one thing is for sure, whatever it ends up looking like,
a fully functional Mars buggy is an essential part of Nasa's plan
to send people to the red planet.
Charlie, you have lived through the most remarkable time
in the history of exploration.
Are you optimistic about the future?
Yes, generally.
I'm very excited about the commercialisation of private
enterprise in space,
to go to the space station, or to take tourists into space,
and Nasa, I feel, is going to focus more on what I call deep space,
the moon and beyond.
So hopefully, we can build a moon base, and develop systems
and stuff on the moon for scientific purposes,
and then from there, not stage directly to Mars,
but give the confidence in our systems that, when we go
to Mars, you're on your own, and you're going to be able
to survive.
Charlie, thank you very much.
It's been a tremendous honour to get a kind of backstage peek
here at Kennedy's spaceport, at this new exciting era of space
travel that we're just on the cusp of
but also to get a sense of how much that this new era owes to the heroes
of Apollo, not just the astronauts like Charlie Duke,
but the thousands of people who worked tirelessly,
brilliantly, inventively, to get them to the moon and back.
But sadly, that's all we have time for.
It is, and you know, Stargazing is about observing the sky, so if it's
clear where you are, why don't you go
up and have a look at that moon, and let your mind wander a bit,
because that is a place where humans, like Charlie, have walked.
And I think if there's one thing that we've learned in our time
at Kennedy, it's that if we choose, then that can be a place
where humans walk again.
Goodnight. Goodnight.