James May commemorates the 40th anniversary of the Apollo moon landings. He meets three of the men who walked on the moon, before experiencing the thrill of weightlessness, and the bone-crushing G forces of a Saturn V rocket launch. Finally, he puts on a space suit and flies to the edge of space in a U2 spy plane, where he looks down at the curvature of the earth and upwards into the black infinit
National Geographic presents the first accurate non-stop voyage from Earth to the edge of the Universe using a single, unbroken shot through the use of spectacular CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery) technology.Building on images taken from the Hubble telescope, Journey to the Edge of the Universe explores the science and history behind the distant celestial bodies in the solar system.This sp
In ‘Jupiter’, we journey half a billion miles from the earth’s surface to a mini solar system of over 60 moons rotating around a powerful planet of gas. Its flowing colours and spots hold strange beauty, but contain violent storms and jet streams.Could this big, bright ball of turbulent weather have been the star of Bethlehem? Could one of its moons harbour life beneath its icy crust? Jupiter, t
In the far corner of our solar system, orbiting quietly, lurks one of the biggest threats to the survival of the human species. Somewhere out there, there’s an asteroid with our name on it. The Earth is under constant bombardment. Each year, many fragments of debris hit our planet. Fortunately for us, most are so small that they burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere. However , there are hundreds
The notion of living in a parallel universe is one of the strangest ideas in all of science, it emerged by complete accident from bizarre experiments and at first scientists resisted their findings but it wasn't until a maverick in the field would force them to take it seriously.The idea is that we are living in a bubble and you are just one of an infinite number versions of yourself, there co
The notion of bringing Mars to life – transforming a cold, dry, uninhabitable desert into a living planet – is called terraforming, it has been around for almost a century. Initially just a science fiction concept, it has become a subject of serious scientific investigation.Recent discoveries of rocks and minerals found by the Mars rovers show it must once have had warmer, habitable living condi
Gemini 8 (officially Gemini VIII) was the sixth manned spaceflight in NASA's Gemini program. The mission conducted the first docking of two spacecraft in orbit, but suffered the first critical in-space system failure of a U.S. spacecraft which threatened the lives of the astronauts and required immediate abort of the mission. The crew was returned to earth safely. The only other time this happened
Like the plot of a sci-fi B movie, something weird is happening deep underground where the constant spin of Earth's liquid metallic core generates an invisible magnetic force field that shields our planet from harmful radiation in space. Gradually, the field is growing weaker. Could we be heading for a demagnetized doomsday that will leave us defenseless against the lethal effects of solar wind an
Mars, the red planet, we have long wondered if it has ever sustained life. Some have dreamt of walking on its surface but more than four decades after they landed on the Moon, NASA are imagining a two year voyage across space to Mars but to do it, they require new rockets on a new scale, a new way of surviving in space and a new bread of astronaut. To finally complete a mission of this scale would