2022 marks the fiftieth year since an astronaut last stepped on the moon’s surface. We look back at the legacy of the Apollo programme and forward to the future of lunar exploration. Maggie and Chris visit the Science Museum in London, where Maggie discovers from space curator Doug Millard that one of the museum’s star attractions – Apollo 10’s command module – nearly did not bring back its entire crew.\n\nChris discovers that Nasa’s latest assault on the moon, the ‘Artemis’ programme, plans to set up an orbiting moon station and a shuttle from it to a permanent base on the moon’s surface, and learns from Nasa’s Dana Hurley that much of the technology needed for such a mission has yet to be invented. Nonetheless, the first dry run for the SLS rocket and the Orion command capsule and moon landing system will go ahead without a crew and is planned later this year. On that first mission to orbit the moon, 13 tiny ‘cubesats’ will be released into the moon’s orbit to discover more about the lunar surface in anticipation of greater future human activity on the moon. These low-cost satellites are providing the next generation of space scientists and engineers an opportunity to work on spacecraft for the first time.\n\nMaggie talks to Craig Hardgrove, an associate professor from Arizona State University, who leads a relatively inexperienced team in building LunaH-Map. The pint-sized craft will scan the lunar surface for evidence of hydrogen, and therefore water, which will be enormously useful for future missions and moon bases to provide sustenance and fuel – once the technology is in place to deliver it.\n\nPete Lawrence is on hand for tips on how best to observe the moon from Earth during the upcoming lunar eclipse on the 16 May, and Chris learns from Professor Sara Russell of the Natural History Museum that the Apollo missions allowed science to identify moon asteroids here on Earth, and that future missions retrieving more moon rock might tell us even more about how the Earth formed and how life emerged.\n
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
What Have Ufos Done For Us?
From unexplained flashes in the night sky to flying saucers, this episode delves into the mysterious world of UFOs. How our drive to explain these bizarre phenomena, and desire ...
08-02-2015
BBC 4
Telescopes Through Time
The Sky at Night team explore the history of the telescope – from Harriot and Galileo's lunar observations to the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes – revealing ...
18-11-2021
BBC 4
Destination: Moon
2022 marks the fiftieth year since an astronaut last stepped on the moon’s surface. We look back at the legacy of the Apollo programme and forward to the future of lunar e ...
11-05-2022
BBC 4
The Astronomer Royal At 80
Martin Rees is perhaps Britain’s most renowned cosmologist. He was master of Trinity College, Cambridge, president of both the Royal Astronomical Society and the Institute ...
16-06-2022
BBC 4
Question Time
A special ‘Question Time’ edition of the programme, recorded at the Civic Theatre, Chelmsford, as part of the British Science Association’s annual science fest ...
22-09-2021
BBC 4
The Moon, The Mission And The Bbc
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo mission to put a man on the moon, The Sky at Night looks back through the archives to tell the story of how the BBC reported the ...
19-09-2021
BBC 4