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For decades, scientists have dreamed of finding life on Mars. But despite their best efforts, no signs of life have been found. Could that be about to change? This is the story of the scientists and engineers behind Perseverance: the rover that could change our view of Mars forever.
As Nasa releases the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope, this film tells the inside story of the telescope's construction and the astronomers taking its first picture of distant stars and galaxies. Will it be the deepest image of our universe ever taken? The successor to Hubble, and 100 times more powerful, the James Webb is the most technically advanced telescope ever built. It will look further back in time than Hubble to an era around 200 million years after the Big Bang, when the first stars and galaxies appeared. Webb's primary mission is to capture the faint light from these objects on the edge of our visible universe so that scientists can learn how they formed, but its instruments are so sensitive it could also be the first telescope to detect signs of life on a distant planet. The James Webb Telescope is an ?8 billion gamble on the skills of its engineering team. It’s the first telescope designed to unfold in space – a complicated two-week operation in which 178 release devices must all work - 107 of them on the telescope's sun shield alone. If just one fails, the expensive telescope could become a giant piece of space junk. From its conception in the late 1980s, the construction of Webb has posed a huge technical challenge. The team must build a mirror six times larger than Hubble’s and construct a vast sun shield the size of a tennis court, fold them up so they fit into an Ariane 5 rocket, then find a way to unfold them in space. This film tells the inside story of the James Webb Space Telescope in the words of the engineers who built it and the astronomers who will use it.
2022 • Astronomy
On the anniversary of the launch of one of the most successful space mission to Mars, the National Geographic Channel is set to premiere a documentary on the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) also known as Mangalyaan. The MOM, was launched on November 5 in 2013 by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and entered the orbit of the red planet on September 24, 2014. The documentary produced by Miditech captures its enthralling journey of over 650 million kilometeres. In its most daring missions to date, India successfully sent a spacecraft to orbit around Mars, making it the fourth space agency in the world and the first Asian country, to successfully send a mission to the red planet. And they did this in record time, choosing a unique route and on a shoe-string budget, pulling off what is now globally recognised as the cheapest ride to Mars! So how did the (ISRO) scientists, with no previous experience in sending an inter planetary mission, design, develop and successfully launch and navigate Mangalyaan through space? What were the hurdles they faced and what out of the box solutions did they come up with to address those challenges? Using a combination of live action, expert interviews, archive footage and graphic representations the film captures the tension and drama points of the space mission. The documentary also focus on the salient features of the mission, all the drama, excitement, last minute preparations, the countdown and the successful launch.
2017 • Astronomy
Black holes are the least understood places in the universe, where the rules of physics collapse. We go inside the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way to uncover terrifying secrets about parallel universes, wormholes, and space-time.
S4E3 • How the Universe Works • 2015 • Astronomy
Phil starts the planet-by-planet tour of the solar system right here at home, Earth.
11 • Crash Course Astronomy • Astronomy
One day, a cosmic disaster will make life on Earth impossible. To survive, we must find a new home amongst the stars. Scientists are already developing new propulsion systems to take us to these distant worlds.
S3E8 • How the Universe Works • 2014 • Astronomy