Documentary series. Mercury, unique amongst the planets, is shrinking. And that's only the beginning of how strange the solar system's smallest planet is. In October 2018 a new mission to Mercury was launched - BepiColombo. It's a spacecraft consisting of two separate orbiters. Together, these hope to achieve the most complete exploration of Mercury to date.\n\nSince its launch, the spacecraft has been hurtling through space towards the inner solar system on an arduous seven-year journey that includes nine fly-bys of other planets. Its destination is dangerous: Mercury has some of the most extreme conditions in the Solar System.\n\nThe Sky at Night investigates how Bepi was built, how it will get to Mercury and what it hopes to discover. Three big questions are at stake. How did Mercury form? Why is it shrinking? And how has it survived the full blast of the sun?
Source: BBC 4
Space Rock Return
The Sky at Night is back for a brand new series, and this month it is delving into Nasa’s OSIRIS-REx mission, which last year brought back a sample from the near-Earth ast ...
11-04-2024
BBC 4
The Sky At Night Meets The Infinite Monkey Cage
In this special episode to mark the end of another season of The Sky at Night, we team up with Radio 4’s The Infinite Monkey Cage to talk all things amateur astronomy. Joi ...
16-11-2023
BBC 4
Question Time Special
A special Question Time edition of the programme, recorded at the University of Exeter as part of the British Science Association’s Science Festival.\n\nThe panel is chair ...
12-10-2023
BBC 4
The Very Large Telescope
The Very Large Telescope – or VLT – has been responsible for some of the greatest astronomical breakthroughs of all time, discoveries that have resulted in Nobel Pri ...
13-09-2023
BBC 4
Black Holes: Searching For The Unknown
There has never been a more exciting time to study one of the most mysterious phenomena in space. This month, The Sky at Night team investigate the science of black holes and di ...
17-08-2023
BBC 4
Is There Anybody Out There?
The Sky at Night team investigates the controversial world of alien communication. The search for life on other planets is one of the most fascinating subjects in science. But w ...
13-07-2023
BBC 4
The Uk Space Race
The Sky at Night team investigates the incredible science and engineering helping the UK to blast into space. We are now one of the biggest satellite building nations in the wor ...
15-06-2023
BBC 4
Will An Asteroid Destroy Earth?
The Sky at Night team explores the threat of an asteroid impact on earth. Around 2,300 asteroids have been identified as ‘potentially hazardous’, and it’s tho ...
18-05-2023
BBC 4
The Search For Alien Life
The Sky at Night team investigate the latest science in the hunt for extraterrestrial life. Scientists have never been more obsessed with finding aliens than they are right now. ...
13-04-2023
BBC 4
Is Cosmology In Crisis?
Ever since we discovered that distant galaxies are racing away from us, there has been a heated debate over just how fast the Universe is expanding.\n\nAt the beginning of the 2 ...
14-02-2019
BBC 4
Space Britannia
The Sky at Night investigates Britain's attempt to become a major player in the modern space race. From Scotland's wild northern shore, where Britain's first spaceport is planne ...
18-10-2018
BBC 4
Beyond Venus
Chris and Maggie report on the reaction to the dramatic announcement of the discovery of phosphine gas in the clouds of Venus, a gas that could be a sign of life. Venus remains ...
11-11-2020
BBC 4
Question Time
A special ‘Question Time’ edition of the programme, recorded at The Venue in De Montford University, Leicester, as part of the British Science Association’s an ...
12-10-2022
BBC 4
Impacts
The team looks at the cosmic impacts which have shaped the universe around us, from asteroids crashing into the surface of the moon to galaxies colliding with each other.
15-06-2014
BBC 4
Guides: 2. Galaxies
Galaxies are the building blocks of the universe. Our solar system sits inside a huge galaxy that we call the Milky Way - home to as many as 300 billion stars. But the Milky Way ...
11-08-2019
BBC 4
Outback Astronomy
In February 2018, news broke that astronomers had seen the cosmic dawn - the moment when stars first formed, flooding the universe with light. What's remarkable is that this inc ...
12-07-2018
BBC 4