In July 1976, NASA's Viking 1 spacecraft attempted a monumental test. For hundreds of years, people have been asking the question, since planets were first discovered, "Is there's life on Mars?" It's been asked throughout history. This was the first time we'd look at the possibility of life, other than life on Earth. Can you imagine what it was like when the team and myself knew that we had a signal and we'd soon get an answer?
The sun is the life-force of our solar system. The Earth is wholly dependent on its energy. Their fates are entwined forever. But in the future the sun will change. One day its benevolent influence will turn against the planets it has nurtured.
In 1973, nine astronauts were sent to live and work in the world's first space station - Skylab. Their mission was to observe the sun, free from the Earth's distorting atmosphere. They witnessed what no one had seen before, a sun more powerful than they had ever imagined.
A billion kilometres from the Earth, a small probe uncoupled from an interplanetary spacecraft and headed for its target. It had a date with Jupiter. In an encounter that would break all records for speed and violence, it accelerated to the largest planet in the solar system, plunged into its fearsome clouds and was swallowed by its atmosphere.
In 1979, a robotic spacecraft flew by the planet Jupiter. There it found an uncharted body the size of our moon. On that small world, it observed something almost unbelievable.
Three, two, one, go. In August 1977, two spacecraft called Voyager began an incredible journey. If they survived the hazards of billions of miles of space, they'd reach worlds so distant and strange, they defied the imagination - the gas giants.
On January 2nd, 1959, with the space age barely a year old, the Soviet Union launched Lunik - "little moon". It was sent to plant a Soviet pennant on the moon. Within hours of the launch, it became clear that Lunik was going to miss its target. As the Soviet scientists watched their tiny probe sail out to join the planets in an endless journey around the sun, an inspired thought occurred to them. They renamed their spacecraft Mechta "The Dream".
Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. Here, on the 12th of September 1959, the rocketeers of the Soviet space programme prepared to launch a probe called Lunik 2. Its destination was the Moon. If it reached its goal, this would be the first time man had touched another world.
