Voyage To The Planets

8:30pm – Thursday, June 17 on ABC1

Thursday, 17 June 2010 Blast-off with Voyage To The Planets: an Australian- made documentary series exploring the pleasures and pitfalls of travel to the alien planets of our own solar system.

Narrated by Richard Roxburgh, this series visits the planets from a very personal perspective: that of the people who have sent probes hurtling to strange worlds, and also from the viewpoint of any one of us who might dream of making a trip ourselves.

For more than 70 years Pluto was counted as the ninth planet, an isolated but sentimental favourite at the end of the solar system. But in recent years this little world has been at the centre of a neighbourhood dispute of cosmic proportions. Just what on Earth caused Pluto to be struck off as a planet? It now seems Pluto has company, and lots of it. And we have more in common with this distant realm than you may have ever imagined.

8:30pm – Thursday, June 10 on ABC1

Blast-off with Voyage To The Planets: an Australian- made documentary series exploring the pleasures and pitfalls of travel to the alien planets of our own solar system.

Narrated by Richard Roxburgh, this series visits the planets from a very personal perspective: that of the people who have sent probes hurtling to strange worlds, and also from the viewpoint of any one of us who might dream of making a trip ourselves.

Voyage To The Planets takes you on a tour into the solar system’s Hot Zone to visit the two planets both laying claim to the title of ‘Real Hell’. While tiny Mercury blisters in the roasting glare of the Sun, cross over to the dark side and you’ll find the temperature plummets to 170 below. Back away from the Sun to cool off and we encounter Venus, our nearest neighbour.

Smothered by a climate gone mad, a romantic visit to our sister planet’s tortured scenery means diving into an atmosphere hot enough to melt lead, where acid smog eats bare metal for breakfast and the pressure could crush a submarine. What happened to turn our planetary neighbours so astonishingly alien? What can a visit tell us about our own?

8:30pm – Thursday, June 3 on ABC1

Blast-off with Voyage To The Planets: an Australian- made documentary series exploring the pleasures and pitfalls of travel to the alien planets of our own solar system.

Narrated by Richard Roxburgh, this series visits the planets from a very personal perspective: that of the people who have sent probes hurtling to strange worlds, and also from the viewpoint of any one of us who might dream of making a trip ourselves.

Got time for a 24-year holiday? Then consider a journey to our most distant and least explored planets, the ice giants Uranus and Neptune. There’s only ever been one Earthly visitor into this ‘chill zone’, the Voyager mission, launched in 1977. What would it be like to follow in its wake, for a human to undertake one of the greatest journeys of space exploration? How would you get there? What would you see? And would you ever survive? Strap yourselves in for an incredible voyage to the outer solar system.

8:30pm – Thursday, May 27 on ABC1

Blast-off with Voyage To The Planets: an Australian made documentary series exploring the pleasures and pitfalls of travel to the alien planets of our own solar system.

Narrated by Richard Roxburgh, this series visits the planets from a very personal perspective: that of the people who have sent probes hurtling to strange worlds, and also from the viewpoint of any one of us who might dream of making a trip ourselves.

In episode three, take a trip to planetary pin-up boy, Saturn, and not only do you get a ringside seat to the greatest spectacle in the solar system, but a close encounter with two extraordinary moons. Tiny Enceladus is making all the headlines as the must-see moon these days. It’s the little moon that has it all: enormous geysers of water and ice shooting into space from the South Pole point to a warm salty ocean beneath the surface and, perhaps, a real possibility of life. Even more Earth-like and yet far more alien is Titan, with a thick atmosphere and weather. Potentially an easier surface to explore even than Mars, this is the only other world we know that you could visit without a spacesuit. Rug up for the cold and fly a hot air balloon in Titanian skies, trek across vast dune fields, or row across a Titanian lake. Just don’t fall in or get caught in the rain: it’s liquid natural gas out here, not water, and it’ll freeze you as hard as rock.

8:30pm – Thursday, May 20 on ABC1

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to leave Earth.

To gaze back at the receding blue gem that is our home planet and go where no human has gone before? What strange sights await you? What dangers must you avoid? With five decades of space exploration behind us, we can now begin to answer these questions.

Blast-off with Voyage To The Planets: an Australian made documentary series exploring the pleasures and pitfalls of travel to the alien planets of our own solar system.

Narrated by Richard Roxburgh, this series visits the planets from a very personal perspective: that of the people who have sent probes hurtling to strange worlds, and also from the viewpoint of any one of us who might dream of making a trip ourselves.

The series is styled in the guise of a visual guidebook, tapping into the mystery and intrigue of space exploration while providing the sort of practical information required by anyone who might like to imagine actually going there. Think of it as a kind of handbook for our cosmic neighbourhood. Voyage To The Planets recaptures the sense of wonder and romance that was so palpable during the early years of the exploration of the Moon and the planets beyond.

With a renewed push to propel humans into the heavens and the last three decades of unmanned interplanetary missions behind us, we now have the legitimacy to look deeply into the solar system to explore what our planetary neighbours offer in terms of destinations for human exploration and discovery. As dawn breaks on a new age of manned space flight, Voyage To The Planets offers a ringside seat to the splendours of the solar system: an astronaut’s guide to whole new worlds of possibility.

8:30pm – Thursday, May 13 on ABC1

Thursday, 13 May 2010 Have you ever wondered what it would be like to leave Earth.

To gaze back at the receding blue gem that is our home planet and go where no human has gone before? What strange sights await you? What dangers must you avoid? With five decades of space exploration behind us, we can now begin to answer these questions.

Blast-off with Voyage To The Planets: an Australian made documentary series exploring the pleasures and pitfalls of travel to the very alien planets of our own solar system.

Narrated by Richard Roxburgh, this series visits the planets from a very personal perspective: that of the people who have sent probes hurtling to strange worlds, and also from the viewpoint of any one of us who might dream of making a trip ourselves.

The series is styled in the guise of a visual guidebook, tapping into the mystery and intrigue of space exploration while providing the sort of practical information required by anyone who might like to imagine actually going there. Think of it as a kind of handbook for our cosmic neighbourhood. Voyage To The Planets recaptures the sense of wonder and romance that was so palpable during the early years of the exploration of the Moon and the planets beyond.

With a renewed push to propel humans into the heavens and the last three decades of unmanned interplanetary missions behind us, we now have the legitimacy to look deeply into the solar system to explore what our planetary neighbours offer in terms of destinations for human exploration and discovery. As dawn breaks on a new age of manned space flight, Voyage To The Planets offers a ringside seat to the splendours of the solar system: an astronaut’s guide to whole new worlds of possibility.