The Lunar Rover • 2014 • episode "15" Cosmic Front

Category: Astronomy

In summer 1969, Apollo 11 succeeded as the first manned mission to land on the moon. The next challenge was to design and build the first exploration vehicle. It had to allow astronauts to explore the moon's surface, but it had to fit in just a meter square space!

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Cosmic Front • 2014 • 18 episodes •

Terraforming Mars

Could human settlements on Mars become reality as early as 100 years from now? Artificial micro organisms created with the latest techniques in synthetic biology could be used to produce resources such as iron, energy, and food directly on the planet itself. What would this new "Earth" look like?

2014 • Astronomy

The Grey Mars

Could Mars have ever harbored life? Thanks to NASA's latest Mars rover Curiosity, scientists are finding clues to this profound question. This program tracks the first year of Curiosity's adventure, and confirms that an ancient environment could have supported life on Mars.

2014 • Astronomy

Betelgeuse - Death of a Super Star

In the Orion constellation, Betelgeuse, a red star 1,000 times the size of the Sun, is an old star that scientists predict will soon come to a violent end. Will we see a supernova explosion 100 times brighter than a full moon in our lifetimes? Will the explosion release rays harming life on Earth?

2014 • Astronomy

Dark Matter

The story of how we discovered Dark Matter and what we do and don't know about this mysterious substance. Did Vera Rubin discover the glue holding galaxies together? What composes dark matter? What are Dark Stars and what is super symmetry, the potential answer to the questions around Dark Matter?

2014 • Astronomy

Extraterrestrial Life

Extraterrestrial life = Science Fiction. Not so fast! -- the Cassini probe has provided photos of Enceladus, where scientists have found geysers of water vapor. And then there is Gliese 581g, a planet with Earth-like conditions....what would life forms look like in these watery environments?

2014 • Astronomy

First Stars

Look up at the night sky, and you see countless shining stars. Our galaxy has 100 billion of them. Astronomers are now hunting for clues that will reveal "the first star" that transformed the ancient universe and led to the creation of everything that followed: galaxies, planets and life itself.

2014 • Astronomy

Illuminating the Magellanic Clouds

The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, luminous in the night sky of the Southern Hemisphere, are celestial bodies shrouded in mystery, but recent observations have revealed some startling facts about them. They are survivors of galaxies formed in the early stages of the Universe.

2014 • Astronomy

Impact - Looking Out for Asteroids

An asteroid colliding with the Earth is not a just Hollywood fantasy. NASA and the Space Guard Foundation develop deflection plans to save the Earth from a comet, meteor or asteroid with Earth in its trajectory. Take a look at how the world is working together to keep our skies safe.

2014 • Astronomy

Knowing without Seeing - The Science of Black Holes

Einstein, Oppenheimer, and other physicists and astronomers wrestled with the concept of Black Holes. With relentlessly powerful gravitational pull, black holes suck in anything that comes near them, but do they? As the study of black holes progresses, science finds more mysteries than solutions.

2014 • Astronomy

Monster Black Holes

There are Black Holes, and then there are Monster Black Holes -- containing several million to ten billion times the mass of our Sun! They've been discovered in the center of many galaxies. But they don't just absorb everything around them...in fact, they may be key to forming new galaxies.

2014 • Astronomy

Our Extraordinary Sun

Telescopes on six solar observation satellites are currently monitoring the sun. The satellites include Japan's Hinode and the SDO developed by the United States. Solar activity (flares, sunspots) is at its lowest since modern observation began - what implications does this have for our Earth?

2014 • Astronomy

Saturn's Moon Titan - Another Earth?

Even with a surface temperature of -180C, Saturn's moon, Titan, could be another Earth. There's evidence of dunes made of quantities of organic material that could contain the building blocks for DNA. Astrobiologists are conducting studies on the possibility that life could be present on Titan.

2014 • Astronomy

Signals from Outer Space?

Were "little green men" trying to contact us? Over 40 years ago, extremely constant pulses were detected reaching the Earth from outer space. It caused a great sensation. Using a radio telescope larger than a baseball field, scientists looked for the source of these signals and found - pulsars.

2014 • Astronomy

Space Shuttle

The Space Shuttle fleet was retired in 2011 after leading international missions for three decades. This is the dramatic story of the tragedies and triumphs of the Space Shuttle fleet, and how it broadened humankind's exploration of space.

2014 • Astronomy

The Lunar Rover

In summer 1969, Apollo 11 succeeded as the first manned mission to land on the moon. The next challenge was to design and build the first exploration vehicle. It had to allow astronauts to explore the moon's surface, but it had to fit in just a meter square space!

2014 • Astronomy

The Mystery of the Universe's Bubbles

Scientists using the Hubble Telescope study vivid images from 12 billion and more light years away and observe that many galaxies cluster together like -- soap bubbles! Analyzing factors like dark matter and gravitational lensing, how can astronomers confirm this amazing bubble structure?

2014 • Astronomy

The Nebra Sky Disc

3,000- years-old, the Nebra Sky Disk is the oldest sky map in the world, predating Babylonian and Egyptian sky maps. Found in Germany, the Nebra Sky Disk is an archaeological mystery. Who were the people who designed this beautiful and functional ancient artifact with exact proportions?

2014 • Astronomy

The Orion Nebula

The Orion Nebula is a interstellar cloud situated in the Milky Way, south of Orion's Belt. In a 2-year effort, scientists create a mosaic of over 100 images at the tip of Orion's sword to discover four massive young stars. What do they tell us about how planetary systems are formed?

2014 • Astronomy

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Chasing Pluto

On July 14, 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft, one of the most advanced ever built, is scheduled to fly by Pluto to take the very first detailed images of the dwarf planet. After nine years and 3 billion miles, we will finally get a close look at this strange, icy world, but only if the craft can survive the final, treacherous leg of its journey, which could take it through a dangerous field of debris.

NOVA PBS • 2015 • Astronomy

Brian Cox: Seven Days on Mars

Professor Brian Cox fulfils a childhood dream by going behind the scenes at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), mission control for Mars 2020 – one of the most ambitious missions ever launched that may finally reveal if life ever existed on the red planet. In 1980, a young Brian Cox wrote to JPL asking for photos from some of their missions to the planets. The pictures they sent him from Voyager and the Viking mission to Mars were a source of inspiration that set him on the path to becoming a physicist. Now, over 40 years later, he has been granted privileged access to JPL, including key mission areas that are usually off-limits to film crews. Brian spends a week following the team who guide the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter - the first powered aircraft ever sent to another planet - across the surface of Mars during a critical stage of the mission. Perseverance's goal is to search for signs of long extinct life on the surface of Mars in an area called Jezero Crater, which, 3.8 billion years ago, was filled by a vast lake. If it finds evidence of that life, it could change everything we know about life in the universe - and even transform our understanding of our own origins.

2022 • Astronomy

Is there Life?

NASA’s Curiosity mission is on a quest to find life on Mars, but what they uncover could reveal far more than what anyone expected

S1E2Mars: The Secret Science Series 1 • 2014 • Astronomy

The Mission

The United States and China are considering launching manned missions to Mars -- in 25 years. But Netherlands-based Mars One has a bold plan to land humans on Mars in 2027. Is the mission fuelled by wishful thinking and unproven science -- or will private explorations get us there?

S1E1Destination Mars • 2015 • Astronomy

Survival

It's not enough for Earth to be habitable; it also has to be lethal for life to thrive. This is the story of how life evolved hand in hand with death. Astronaut host – Jerry Linenger

5/10One Strange Rock • 2018 • Astronomy

Deeper, Deeper, Deeper Still

The Ship of the Imagination ventures on an epic voyage to the bottom of a dewdrop to explore the universe on the smallest scale and observe exotic life forms invisible to the naked eye. Then, host Neil deGrasse Tyson explains the neural network in our brains which determine our sense of smell and memory, and later, he travels deep beneath the surface of the Earth to discover the most mysterious particle we know.

S1E6Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey • 2014 • Astronomy