Space Exploration

Science

• Engines and Routes: The Physics and Engineering of Getting Anywhere Why did engineers set off small bombs inside a firing rocket engine? Go inside the engines, then learn how a route through the Solar System is planned, how ion engines and light sails win over time, what nuclear power offers, and how a spacecraft is built to survive heat, cold, radiation and launch.
• How We Get There: Rockets, Orbits and Robot Explorers Why is a rocket almost all fuel, and why is reaching orbit about speed rather than height? Meet the pioneers who worked out spaceflight, see why coming home is a fireball, and follow the robot explorers: gravity slingshots, talking to probes billions of kilometres away, grabbing samples from asteroids and fixing Hubble.
• Humans in Space: Living in Orbit, Back to the Moon, On to Mars What do months without weight do to a human body, and how do astronauts live and work on the space station? Find out how Apollo really worked and how we know it happened, then follow the new race to the Moon's south pole and what it would take to get people to Mars and back.
• Staying Out There: Life Support, Shelter and the Limits of Distance What would it take to live beyond Earth for years? Work out how air and water are recycled, whether plants can grow in Moon soil, how to shield people from radiation, whether spinning a ship can make gravity, how to do medicine with no hospital nearby, and how to make water and fuel on the Moon and Mars.
• The New Space Age: Reusable Rockets, Satellite Swarms and Space Junk How does a rocket land itself, and what does Starship still have to prove? Find out what thousands of satellites are doing up there, why low orbit is filling with junk, who gets to fly now, and how engineers judge a big space claim before believing it.