Stargazing Challenges

A short documentary interviewing an astronomer.

Discover how the big, bold ideas of Silicon Valley are helping launch a new era of private space exploration in this half-hour KQED Science documentary. From space tourism to mining the moon to companies ferrying NASA astronauts into space, a new wave of commercialization is shaking up the $300-billion global space industry. Meet a new generation of entrepreneurs, sprung from the high-tech culture of Silicon Valley, who are venturing into the new "wild west" of space exploration in search of their space gold. But are there new risks when space is no longer the exclusive domain of big governments?

A short documentary about an engineer in a Chilean observatory.

A short documentary interviewing a renown astronomer and astrophysicist.

This documentary examines theories behind the creation of gamma ray bursts, destructive explosions in space that can wipe out entire star systems.

Kate Humble and Helen Czerski reveal the inner workings of the sun and investigate why scientists think changes in the sun's behaviour may have powerful effects on our climate.

How's it all gonna end? This experience takes us on a journey to the end of time, trillions of years into the future, to discover what the fate of our planet and our universe may ultimately be. We start in 2019 and travel exponentially through time, witnessing the future of Earth, the death of the sun, the end of all stars, proton decay, zombie galaxies, possible future civilizations, exploding black holes, the effects of dark energy, alternate universes, the final fate of the cosmos - to name a few.

It’s October 10 2020 and Kim Jong-un presents the largest mobile rocket on Earth. Jippe Liefbroer, Interaction Design student, sees the rocket and thinks: it can be bigger. For his graduation project he built 'Kimmi's worst nightmare', a 31 meter long rocket. That is 1 meter longer than Kim Jung-un's.

This film consists of three parts. The first dramatizes the life of the founder of Soviet astronautics, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky; the second describes the development of rocket technology; and the third visualizes the future with enactments of the first manned spaceflight, spacewalk, space station construction and humans on the moon.

Three billion miles away a grand-piano-sized spacecraft is speeding through the outer solar system at nearly 1,000 miles per minute. After nearly a decade in space, the New Horizons space probe will have just 86 seconds to complete its primary mission: Discover the planet Pluto. This time-sensitive special will showcase the first quality pictures of Pluto that the probe will capture.