Episode 1
How the Solar System Family Is Organized
Since 1962, robots have been exploring our solar system to help answer this most important question: Who are we? With fascinating data and images now in hand, explore this family album overview of our planets, dwarf planets, moons, asteroids, Kuiper Belt objects, and long-period comets, and fly through some of our solar system’s most unique features!
Episode 2
Mercury, The Extreme Little Planet
Mercury is a planet of many solar system extremes; learning how these characteristics result in a planet where the Sun sometimes moves backward across the sky; a planet where water ice has been found at the poles.
Episode 3
Venus, The Veiled Greenhouse Planet
The Venusian carbon dioxide atmosphere causes the hottest surface temperature in the solar system; the Earth and Venus contain about the same amount of carbon; the forces that result in the extreme atmospheric differences between these two planets.
Episode 4
Earth: How Plate Tectonics Sets Up Life
A theory proposed less than 70 years ago says that plate tectonics could be a main driver of life on Earth; exploring the movement of the planet's surface; the many ways in which a geologically active Earth sustains the biologically active planet.
Episode 5
Orbiting Earth: Up through the Atmosphere
Earth has a relatively thin atmosphere; without this layer, life would not evolve and thrive; the properties of each atmospheric layer; encountering specific ways to explore each layer as a springboard to exploring the rest of the solar system.
Episode 6
Exploring the Earth-Moon System
The Earth's moon is the largest moon in the solar system relative to its planet's size; the many ways in which this system affects the tides on Earth and on the Moon, the planet's rotation and revolution, tidal locking, and planetary stability.
Episode 7
Humans on the Moon: A Never-Ending Story
Even before the invention of telescopes, humans are familiar with various aspects of the Moon's surface; one can also explore complex lunar swirls, sinuous rilles and the lava tubes that hold promise as ideal locations for future lunar bases.
Episode 8
Exploring Mars from Space and the Ground
Humanity's fascination with Mars is never-ending; learning how the similarities and differences between Earth and Mars result in Mars' planet-wide dust storms, migrating polar ice caps and 3.9-billion-year-old impact craters.
Episode 9
Water on Mars and Prospects for Life
Recent robotic exploration provides evidence that Mars' barren landscape could be much more Earth-like in the past; whether Mars could be an Earth sibling; discoveries that will guide future exploration and scientific inquiry on the Red Planet.
Episode 10
Near-Earth Asteroids and the Asteroid Belt
How collisions with asteroids can be avoided, with 20,000 asteroids identified in near-Earth orbit; why these rocky bodies, and those in the Asteroid Belt, never accrete into planets; how their resources can be harnessed for future space travel.
Episode 11
Mighty Jupiter, The Ruling Gas Giant
Whether Jupiter has a greater similarity to the Earth or to the Sun; exploring the many ways in which Jupiter is unique among the planets; what the solar system would be like without it; without Jupiter, life on Earth might never have a chance.
Episode 12
Jupiter's Planetlike System of Moons
The 79 Jovian moons; why Jupiter's gravitational forces, plus the orbital resonance of the three interior moons, make these some of the most promising places to search for life; why scientists believe the Jovian system once included other moons.
Episode 13
Saturn and the Rings: Gravity's Masterpiece
Saturn and its complex ring system; what decades of exploration reveal about the origin and morphology of these icy rings; how they interact with Saturn's closest moons; propeller moonlets; a hexagonal polar storm; the giant vortex.
