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NARRATOR: Since the dawn
of the space age,

we have seen so much
and travelled so far.

We've sent spacecraft
to Venus and Mercury.

We've landed a rover on Mars.

We've flown past the moons of Jupiter
and through the rings of Saturn.

We've even photographed
the icy mountains on Pluto.

With our telescopes on the ground
and in space,

we've discovered that we live
in a galaxy of hundreds
of billions of stars...

..in a universe of hundreds
of billions of galaxies.

But for all we've accomplished
and all we've learned,

the most important star in our sky
remains unexplored.

The Sun.

The sun makes all life
on Earth possible.

But in certain circumstances,

it can also cause untold damage
to our modern society.

That's why, right now
in a mountaintop in Hawaii,

and in the clean rooms

of the applied physics laboratory
near Washington DC,

scientists are rushing to complete
two projects designed to probe

the deepest mysteries of the sun...

..and not a moment too soon.

Now more than ever, our future
depends on understanding the sun.

KALIRAI: The sun is the heartbeat
of the solar system and our world.

We see the sun rise
and set every day.

For all life on Earth, it's the most

recognisable and constant object
in the universe.

GILBERT: It warms our oceans,
it creates weather patterns.

It also provides energy to plants,

which provide us with our food
and oxygen.

The sun allows us to exist.

McINTOSH: The idea of the sun-Earth
connection,

this transport of energy,

as much as that
is a truly beautiful thing,

it's actually quite insidious.

It means that our civilisation

is at the whim of what that thing
wants to do.

GRUNSFELD:
It's a double-edged sword.

Even though we think of the sun

as this quiet,
benign provider of warmth,

it's actually a very violent place.

The sun is enormous.

It's 99.9% of the mass
of the solar system.

You could take more than a million
Earths and fit them inside the sun.

In the extreme density and the
pressure of the centre of the sun,

through a process known
as nuclear fusion,

individual hydrogen atoms

combine to form helium and generate
tremendous power.

And so the core of the sun
is like a massive hydrogen bomb.

We've seen a hydrogen bomb on Earth.

(EXPLOSION)

Imagine billions of hydrogen bombs

going off every second for four
billion years.

And that immense nuclear force
inside the sun

is pushing hundreds of millions
of tonnes of mass outward.

But gravity is countering that force
and pulling everything inward.

These two forces are in a perfect
state of balance.

Toppling that balance
in any one direction

can cause catastrophic events on
planet Earth.

Our civilisation, our society is at
the whim of what that thing

wants to do,
and if it decides to blow its top,

we'd be in a whole world of hurt.

And that's what happened in 1859.

ONSAGER: By the early 1800s,

the scientific understanding of
electricity and magnetism

enabled new technologies
like the telegraph.

And by 1858,

there were about 200,000km
of telegraph wires

laid around the world, which enabled
unprecedented communication

between the continents.

KASPER: On one particular morning
in 1859,

British astronomer Carrington

was projecting an image of the sun
onto a sheet of paper...

..and he actually saw a bright flash
of white light.

He saw a white flash and went,
"What's that?"

16, 20 hours later,

telegraph wires begin
to flash and arc.

People pulled out the plugs,

but power was still coming
out of them.

Telegraph wires
from London to Bombay.

The Victorian internet got fried.

People didn't know what to do.

Batteries got charged up
even though they were pulled out.

Compass needles went crazy.

The whole sky lit up at night
with the northern lights.

Alaska and Canada are used to seeing

the Aurora Borealis,
the northern lights.

What was it like in September 1859

when the people in Cuba looked up
and saw the northern lights?

MOUNTAIN: In the southern part of
the United States,

the Baltimore Advertiser reported,

"The light was greater
than that of the moon when its full

when the quiet streets of the city
presented a beautiful appearance."

Rather than being mystified,
they should have been terrified.

Because we were seeing an event
of an incredible power

of an energy we didn't
in fact understand,

which became known
as the Carrington event.

And if that happened today
and we weren't prepared,

it would take out our GPS,

it would take out our internet
and take out our power grids.

That's why we're building a
telescope

on top of a mountain in Hawaii

called DKIST, so we can look
at the sun in incredible detail.

We're building the first spacecraft

that can fly to the sun,
Solar Probe Plus.

So we have to understand the sun far
better than we do

because we don't want to be
surprised

by one of these events again.

We will have
another Carrington event.

We just don't know when.

The astrophysics clock is ticking.

We're building the world's largest
solar telescope

so we can actually make predictions
about what the sun will do.

This is beyond just exploration.

This is actually designed
to protect the Earth.

We're at 10,000ft here and this
round structure

that we have in the back
is the entrance aperture.

We have a requirement
to be centring that hole

on the sun within 70mm.

MOUNTAIN: We've been observing the
sun for millennia.

For a lot of our history
as a species

the sun has always been the symbol
of perfection

that drove the entire human
existence.

In ancient African, Egyptian,
Chinese,

Roman, Greek, Hindu mythologies,

we've had gods
to explain the sun's presence.

In the late stone age, humans built

great temples to track the motions
of the sun.

Places like Stonehenge in England
and Newgrange in Ireland.

MURTAGH: At Newgrange,
during the winter solstice,

the sun would shine through that
chamber and through that tunnel,

light up the chamber and bring
the souls of the dead to heaven.

Modern solar science really started

with the development
of the telescope.

You know, prior to Galileo turning
his small telescope to the skies,

we thought that the sun was this
perfect orb, and it's not.

In 1611, Italian astronomer
Galileo Galilei

discovered a way to observe
the bright surface of the sun

by projecting it onto a piece of
paper with his home-made telescope.

To his surprise, he saw that the sun
was not perfect.

Dark spots were scattered
across its surface.

He drew these spots day after day,

and seeing that they were moving,
created the first flip book movie.

It showed not only
that the sun was imperfect

but it was also rotating.

The origin and nature of sunspots
would remain a mystery for 300 years,

and drawing and tracking them

would become a passion for
astronomers around the world.

In fact, Richard Carrington was
drawing a massive sunspot group

on that very day in 1859

when he saw the mysterious bright
flash coming from the sun.

And it wasn't until 1912
that we began to understand

what these sunspots are

when George Ellery Hale built
this enormous solar telescope

on Mount Wilson in Los Angeles

where he could look at the sun
in incredible detail,

into the heart of the sunspots.

Hale's telescope funnels the sunlight
down a 150-foot tower

into an observing room
where he could see the sun in detail.

Sunspots are still drawn there
to this day.

Then when Hale passed
the light from a sunspot

through the spectrograph,
it measured the magnetic field

for the very first time
inside the sun spot.

And that was the realisation
that the sun had magnetic field

and the sunspots were the heart
of these magnetic fields.

So the sun's a star, of course,

and its core has a nuclear furnace,

which kinda gives way to what
we call the radiative zone.

And the radiative zone is this kinda
loosey-goosey place

where there's a lot of hydrogen
and helium mixed and photons.

As you get out into the outer half
of the solar interior,

we come across this place
called the convection zone,

and it's really
like a big pot of soup.

And that is the place where the
sun's magnetic field is generated.

Sometimes the magnetic field
becomes very unstable

and it pops through the surface
and makes what we call sunspots.

These sunspots turn black
because these magnetic fields

restrain the bubbling,
boiling convection

creating a slightly cooler region
than the surrounding,

bright 6,000-degree sun.

And if you look at these images
of the sun

in extreme ultraviolet light,

you can actually see that the hot
atmosphere of the sun

is being held in place by the strong

magnetic fields that are coming
from those sunspots.

It almost looks like a neon sign.

But instead of a glass tube holding
this hot gas in place,

there's actually a strong magnetic
field there.

You see these incredible structures
and beautiful tendrils,

like the whole sunspot is alive.

And then you realise the sunspot
itself

is vastly bigger than the Earth.

Unfortunately, what can happen from
time to time

is as a large sunspot emerges,

it places these larger
and larger ropes

of magnetic field
into the atmosphere

and it injects more and more energy
into those magnetic ropes.

It twists them
like twisting a spring.

It just gets a stronger
and stronger magnetic field

with more and more energy pent-up
into it.

It's like you've been compressing
a spring, trying to push it.

Suddenly it pops up,

and that magnetic energy
that was pent up there

takes that material from the
atmosphere and shoots it out.

And that then becomes
the coronal mass ejection

with it's high-speed magnetic field
that can impact Earth.

With the coronal mass ejection,

literally, it's a mass of coronal
material ejected very fast.

Very high-energy particles

probably coming at about two million
miles an hour.

They are the nasty guys, and they
have enough mass that they can smash

into our planet causing another
Carrington-level event.

Such an event would do untold damage
to our infrastructure.

So understanding the sunspots is why
we're building the DKIST telescope.

What we're trying to do is to
measure magnetic fields

inside these sunspots

so we can actually predict
when a Carrington event comes

with enough time for us to do
something about it.

And to do that, we need incredibly
high resolution.

RIMMELE: So here on Maui,
10,000ft above sea level

on top of Haleakala, which in Hawaii
means the house of the sun,

and it really is a perfect sight
for solar observing.

Going up high gets us way above much
of the atmospheric turbulence,

so blurring of the images
is very low.

We also have technology called
adaptive optics

that the military developed
to look at spy satellites.

And it can correct, in real time,
the distortions of the light

coming through the atmosphere over
a thousand times a second.

And for the first time, we're able
to bring together that technology

with the ability to make a really
big mirror.

One of the main components
is the four-metre mirror

that collects the light, the formula
magnifying glass, if you will.

But when we point a four-metre
telescope at the sun

and then focus that
into a focal point,

it would melt steel, it would melt
copper within seconds.

So we have to be very careful
with this device

and we have to actually cool it.

And with that
a massive four-metre telescope

on an incredible site like Haleakala

combined with adaptive optics,
we were able to look

with unprecedented detail
into the heart of sunspots.

The DKI solar telescope will allow
us to see the sun as never before.

But there are some things that can
only be seen when the sun goes dark.

It was the most amazing thing
I've ever experienced.

I was on a boat,
and we looked at the ocean

and we could see the shadow as it
was coming towards us very fast.

McINTOSH: We were sitting on a beach
waiting for the clouds to clear off,

the wind patterns start to change,

animals start to change.

Everything just goes quiet.

And then all of a sudden, it hits.

MAN 1: Oh, wow!

(CROWD GASPING)

Oh, my God.
Oh, my.

During a total solar eclipse,
it's a very weird experience

when the sun literally disappears.

For me, it was sort of a religious
experience.

A total solar eclipse
is what happens

when the moon blocks out the light
from the sun.

It's as simple as that.

For thousands of years of eclipses,

we saw it,
but we didn't really understand.

In 1925,
there was a total solar eclipse

that was visible from New York City,

and they sent a naval aircraft up

to provide the first movie
of a total solar eclipse.

Eclipses were the only time
you could see the sun's corona,

the sun's enigmatic cloud
that surrounds it.

And they filmed for the very first
time a movie of that corona,

which is extremely important
for understanding

solar physics and space weather.

It was a very special time
in history.

When the disc of the moon blocks
the light of the sun,

the naked eye can see

the sun's mysterious atmosphere
known as the corona.

The corona reveals
that in addition to light,

the sun also radiates

electrically-charged particles
called the solar wind.

FOX: The corona really hides two
fundamental mysteries from us.

One, that it's actually hotter
than the surface of the sun.

The surface of the sun
is at about 6,000 degrees.

But that corona is up
at a few million degrees.

That just shouldn't happen.

If you have a bonfire, you put your
hand close to the fire, it gets hot.

As you move away, it gets cooler.

That's not the same with the sun.

And the second mystery,
why in that region

does this solar material
suddenly get accelerated

and form what we call
the solar wind.

Solar wind is constant emissions
from the sun that sweep out

continuously across the solar system

and generally made up
of magnetic field

and particles,
protons and electrons.

All of our solar system,
and especially Earth,

are constantly buffeted
by this solar wind.

And changes in the speed
of the wind or it's pressure

can actually have big consequences
on Earth.

And if you wanna understand
how the solar atmosphere

is heated to its high temperature,
or if you wanna understand

how the wind is accelerated
at very high speeds,

there are a few basic things
that we need to measure directly.

We've tried for nearly
half a century in the space age

to solve these two physics problems.

But all of our models,
all of our theories have failed

to be able to tell us exactly why
these two mysteries happen.

We've successfully put a man
on the moon, and that was hard.

That was really hard.
And yet, we haven't been able

to fly a spacecraft really close to
the sun to answer those questions.

It is just so much harder.

We're just starting
to scratch the surface

of observing the sun directly.

We've had a number of very
interesting missions,

but all of these are at a distance.

For the first time in 2018, we're
gonna send a mission,

Solar Probe Plus,
to go very close to the sun.

It's taken a lot of technology, a
lot of advancements,

to be able to make sure
that a Solar Probe

would be able to go and survive
and work in that environment.

Extreme heat, crushing gravity,
and massive radiation

means that sending a probe to the sun

is one of the greatest challenges
NASA has ever faced.

It would be the harshest environment
a spacecraft has ever encountered.

Solar Probe starts her journey
on a Delta IV Heavy,

which is our largest
lift capacity rocket.

They have to survive launch.

The instantaneous acceleration the
spacecraft will experience

is something like 300 times gravity.

After the rocket gets up into orbit,

it's gonna be a very busy first
couple of months for Solar Probe.

Six weeks after launch, she will
encounter Venus for the first time,

and we're gonna do gravity assists

to get us into the orbit
that we want to get into.

She'll encounter Venus
another six times

to gradually make her come closer
and closer to the sun,

so we kinda walk her orbit in
until we're just a little shy

of four million miles
above the solar surface.

Radiation doses are extremely high.

The sun will be more
than 400 times brighter

than we're used to seeing it.

We have to absorb so much light
that it could actually flip

the spacecraft around if we aren't
actively compensating for it.

The front of the spacecraft
will get up to

temperatures of around 1,600 degrees
Celsius.

So it'll actually be visibly
glowing, it's so hot.

There aren't even US standards
on how to measure

material properties at those
elevated temperatures.

This huge heat shield is reflecting
and absorbing all of that heat

such that the instruments on the
body of the spacecraft

are operating at about room
temperature.

Solar Probe will become the fastest
object ever made.

The closest approach to the sun's
gravity accelerates us

and so we're gonna be moving
at a couple million miles an hour.

Solar Probe is going to a region
that no-one's been to before,

just outside of the very outer edges
of the corona.

We will be able
to get into that area

where these coronal
mass ejections form.

Once we know the basic physics
underneath that,

that'll help us better predict
whether or not an event

is going to be disruptive on Earth.

Right now the team is very focused
on the beginning of Solar Probe,

getting everything together,
getting her on the rocket

and getting her up into orbit.

I don't think any of us really want
to think about the end.

After the final fly-by of Venus,

we can continue for certainly
a fair few orbits.

Unfortunately, at some point,
we will run out of fuel.

At that point, the spacecraft
will start to rotate around,

and the sun will hit the areas
of the spacecraft

that are not designed
to see the sun,

and, unfortunately, at that point,
that will be the end of Solar Probe.

She will be destroyed.

You just hope that you've
anticipated every surprise.

Of course, it wouldn't be a mission
of exploration

if we knew what we were gonna see.

Solar Probe Plus
will reveal our stars

that could never be seen
from the ground.

It may finally solve the mysteries
of the corona...

..and it will help us understand
what happens when the solar wind

reaches the Earth, our fragile home.

FOX: The aurora has sparked so many
legends and myths.

The Eskimos used to think
it was a sign of their loved ones

coming down to visit them,
playing in the sky.

The Chinese candle dragon
is named for the aurora.

The Vikings thought it was a bridge
to Valhalla.

The first aurora records were
from about 4,000 years ago.

People thought that aurora portended
births or deaths of emperors.

These are beautiful glimmering
lights in the northern sky.

In fact, quite recently, Reykjavik
turned off all their lights

so their citizens could just see

the effects of the sun
on that night sky

as the magnetic particles funnel
down onto the Earth.

When the electrically-charged
particles of the solar wind

hit the Earth's magnetic field, they
are funnelled towards the poles,

where they interact
with the upper atmosphere

causing it to shimmer and glow.

This is the display
we call the aurora borealis,

the northern lights.

The aurora borealis is an indicator
of the intensity of the solar wind.

Normally, that wind is
like a steady breeze,

but sometimes, it can be a storm

or, in the case of a Carrington
event, a hurricane.

Understanding this space weather
is essential to the survival

of our technologically-advanced
civilisation.

The first space weather forecasts
were broadcast

from the Eiffel Tower back in 1928.

At that point, we knew that our
radio communication

was affected by disturbances coming
from the sun.

Space base measurements in the 1950s

beginning with the start
of the space age

and our ground-based measurements
finally gave us the ability

to measure somewhat comprehensibly

this entire chain
between the sun and the Earth.

Technology is vulnerable to these
disturbances in space

and understanding that vulnerability
and being able to prepare for it,

it's the mission of the space
weather prediction centre.

Here's three days of the solar X-ray
backgrounds.

You can see we had a C-class flare
two days ago,

but since then,
solar activity's been very quiet.

Again, not a lot of threat from the
current regions on the solar disc.

Right now we're outside a three-day
window to issue watches,

but we'll be keeping an eye on that
feature as it moves into position.

The Space Weather Prediction Centre
is where the nation's alerts

warnings and information about space
weather are determined

and have disseminated throughout
the nation and around the world.

Often times,
space weather's compared

to where terrestrial meteorology was

in the early 1900s with a handful
of observation points.

It's a lot like forecasting
hurricanes with a report

that winds are shifting a few
hundred miles away

by only having
a few observation points

versus today having real-time data
from multiple model indications.

We do have growing access

to comprehensive ground-based
and space-based data

that we are just now starting
to develop the ability

to incorporate it more effectively
in our numerical models

from the sun to the Earth,
and that advance will,

in my opinion,
take us to the next level

in accurate space weather services.

We understand that the sun does have

these additional emissions,
if you will.

Not just the heat and the light,
but the emissions associated

with solar flares
and coronal mass ejections.

These emissions from the sun
can cause big, big problems

to the technology here on Earth
and in space.

In the past, space weather events
have lead to near-dire consequences.

One was, in fact,
during the Cold War

in the middle
of the Cuban Missile Crisis

when one of our U2 pilots ended up
in Russian airspace.

What caused the confusion
was the aurora borealis.

The pilot was relying
on the night sky and stars

to understand which way he was going
and could not see the stars

with the brilliant aurora borealis
that was occurring.

And ended up in Russian airspace
at a very, very bad time

when any action by either side
could've triggered nuclear war.

Several years later, May 1967,

there's a large sunspot observed,

sure enough what produced a big
flare at the wrong time.

All of a sudden,
radar systems that we rely on

for national defence were jammed.

This was not a good thing.

In response, we had to dispatch

nuclear strike capability
of aircraft.

But within minutes, space weather
forecast just monitoring the sun

were able to advise the decision
makers, "Hey, heads up.

Big, big solar flare occurred,

likely the cause of the jamming
of our national defence systems."

We realised then just how critical
it was that we get this information

in the right hands
at the right time.

With every year that passes,

our infrastructure's becoming more
and more sensitive

to an event like this.

We're more dependent on technology.

We run our power grids closer
and closer to the maximum amount

of power that they can deliver.

So we really need to address this.

In terms of forecasting
space weather,

it's an incredibly
difficult process.

It's not like terrestrial
meteorology

where we have thousands of
satellites that encompass the Earth

where we can actually see weather
systems

forming thousands of miles away.

Earth's weather and space weather,
this conceptual gap of 60 years,

which is pretty much the age
of the space age, right?

Their ability to see the global
Earth's weather system

lead to vast advances

and predictability
of the Earth's weather.

We need the same thing for the sun.

In the vastness
of interplanetary space,

we only have a handful of satellites
monitoring the sun.

Among them are
the Solar Dynamics Observatory,

which views our star in multiple
wavelengths of light

corresponding to different
temperatures.

Stereo A and B,
complimentary spacecraft,

which provide us with a 360 degree
view of the sun's surface...

..and the solar and heliospheric
observatory,

which blocks the disc of the sun,
making an artificial eclipse

which allows us to observe the corona
and detect coronal mass ejections.

But these satellites leave a
considerable gap in our knowledge

of coronal mass ejections,
how they form,

their magnetic properties
and the direction they're headed.

The thing that really gives you
the mega-punch

when one of these things erupts,
it's like a tumbleweed.

The problem is this is a big, hot,
magnetic intergalactic tumbleweed.

And we don't know from when that
thing leaves the sun

how it evolves at all
until it gets to the Earth.

The sun is constantly producing
coronal mass ejections...

..but they're thrown out
in all directions.

And because the sun is so far away
and the Earth is such a small target,

we rarely suffer a serious impact.

But if the Earth is in the right
place at the wrong time,

there could be devastating
consequences.

Back in 1859, Richard Carrington
saw one of those events

that went off towards us,

and that coronal mass ejection
slammed into our magnetic field

and actually produced the effects
that we saw.

If that happened today, it would be
devastating if we weren't ready.

One of the biggest indicators of
whether you'll have

a major disturbance at Earth is just

which way the magnetic field
is pointed

inside that eruption
when it gets to Earth.

We have a lot of images of
eruptions,

but we don't necessarily
have a good way

of figuring out
when their magnetic field is

and which way the magnetic field
is oriented.

The Earth has a magnetic field.
It's like this bar magnet.

You know, north is at the top,
south is at the bottom.

The problem with the sun is it has
a very chaotic magnetic field,

and when it throws off one of these
mass events,

it's orientation matters too.

So you have this thing
flying through space,

but if the orientations are like
this, what happens?

It just passes straight by.

The problem comes when you turn
the magnetic field around.

As it comes towards us, chaos.

Suddenly all those electrically
charged particles from the sun

generate a huge electrical surge
down the Earth's magnetic field

which has to go somewhere.

And, of course, we've covered the
Earth with all kinds of wires,

our electrical grids.

And so that's where this massive
electrical surge is going to go,

right into our power grids.

When the currents flow
in the power grid,

you could categorise the threat
in two different ways.

One, it can trip out
critical systems

causing us significant problems
on the electric power grid.

The second piece
is transformer damage.

These transformers are very big
and should they be damaged,

that presents a whole new challenge
because these big transformers

are not sitting on a shelf
out back to be replaced.

They're often tailor-made,
it takes time to make 'em,

and it could result in a long-term
outage measured in weeks and months.

When the Carrington event happened
and those transmission lines

for the telegraph got hit
by those electrical currents

and burst into flames,

that's nothing compared
to what would happen

in a big solar event
to the power grids.

Should a Carrington-level event
happen again,

the current estimates are
that it would cost the US alone

about three trillion dollars
and that the eastern seaboard

could be without power for a year.

GPS navigation can get knocked out,

spacecraft can get radiation doses,

polar airline flights
can be disrupted.

We're looking at communication
systems failing,

financial systems
coming to a screeching halt.

The impacts would be major
for the economy.

It's the same thing
that's gonna happen

when the power goes out
from a hurricane.

It's the same that's gonna happen
with a geo-magnetic storm.

The lights go out,
what do you do now?

Hurricane Sandy,
you had a population

of 25 million people without power.

But what if it was
the entire region?

Not just New York to Boston quarter,

but now you add in Chicago,
Detroit, Minneapolis.

There's very few natural hazards
outside of geomagnetic storms

that even produce
that wide of an impact.

It could start on the east coast and
go all the way to the west coast.

It could start in Europe and reach
our east coast.

You know, it could be the whole
planet that goes dark.

It would really be a pretty major
event for humanity.

Major storms from the sun actually
hit the earth's atmosphere

roughly once a decade.

Nothing of the scale of the
Carrington flares

happened since 1859.

Statistically, it is predicted that
a large-scale coronal mass ejection

could hit the Earth once every
hundred years.

This means we are due for one
any time now.

The government has realised

just how vulnerable our
technological civilisation is.

And so president Obama
signed an executive order

to engage government agencies
in building a master plan

for mitigation strategies
for space weather events.

We need to focus on low probability,

high-consequence geomagnetic storms.

If you know when you have a plan,
then hopefully the power

will only be out for hours to days

because the system was warned,

took steps, protected itself,

and now we're talking about
restarting the system

versus having to rebuild the system.

Today, we have virtually no warning
in the event of a major solar storm.

But the understanding gained through
observations

from the DKI solar telescope
and Solar Probe Plus

could give us the lead time
we need to be safe.

With enough warning, we can shut down
our electrical grids,

power down our satellites,
ground our flights,

and protect ourselves
from a powerful solar storm.

On my space flight,
I've had the real privilege

of being able to go service and
upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope.

And the Hubble Space Telescope
is really our starship

that allows us to transport
ourselves to distant galaxies,

which are, of course, just
collections of billions of stars.

And they come in all sizes
and colours.

Our Sun is kind of a puny star
in celestial standards.

But that's very fortunate for us

because the really big rock star
Suns have very short lifetimes

and often end their lives in
spectacular supernova explosions.

We look into the heart of Orion
with the Hubble,

you can see stars being created.

If you look further out, you can see
these beautiful nebulae

called the helix nebulae
or the cat's eye nebulae.

These are beautiful structures,
wonderful images.

However,
that's the end point of our sun.

That's our sun dying.

So we know what's going to happen.

Today our Sun is a middle-aged star.

It has enough hydrogen left

to continue to burn for another five
billion years.

Once it runs out of that hydrogen,

the pressure that the sun generates
in its core is gonna give up.

As the core of the star collapses,
the outer layers of the sun

will expand into space.

That's what we call
a red giant star.

When the sun is a red giant,
it'll be about 200 times bigger

than it is today and a thousand
times more luminous.

So it'll scorch the inner planets

and then the sun is gonna cool
and fade over time

and that's what we call
a white dwarf star.

We know that a low-mass star
like the sun

is gonna suffer that eventual end
fate.

A time will come when we'll need to
find another planet to call home;

an Earth 2.0.

Until recently, we could only wonder

if there were other planets out there
among the stars.

But now we know.

Our space telescopes have shown that
virtually every star in the sky

has at least one planet
revolving around it.

But developing the technology to take
us to another potential home

is something we have yet to achieve.

If we're eventually gonna go
to other stars,

we're gonna need to go much faster
than we've ever gone before

and to do that, we're gonna need
some kind of nuclear propulsion.

For the history of space flight,

we've been depending
on chemical rockets.

And it's been very effective
to go to the moon...

..to explore low Earth orbit.

We're just starting
to use electric propulsion

to send our spacecraft
out into deep space,

which provides very low thrust,
but because it's electric,

you can thrust for a very long time.

The Dawn spacecraft has been
exploring our asteroid belt

using this electric propulsion.

I believe the next generation of
rocket will be a fusion rocket.

Fusion is the engine
that powers the sun,

combining hydrogen into helium
and releasing energy.

It's something that we've been
working on for decades here on Earth

to provide clean fusion power
for electricity.

And so when we build a fusion rocket

and send people out eventually
to another star,

our Sun, which has provided us this
nice environment on Earth,

the warmth, the sunlight,
the light for plants to grown,

will have given us the key
to leave this paradise

and try and find that Earth 2.0.

Our star will one day fade away.

But understanding its inner workings
may help us to escape the same fate.

We're now entering into this golden
age of solar observations.

Combining ground-based observations
with space-based observations

provides us a full picture of the
entire solar atmosphere.

For the Solar Probe team,

we're finally gonna go
on this voyage.

By the time we launch,
it will have been 60 years

since the first time this mission
was actually called for.

It's just so exciting to think we're
gonna send a probe

into the sun's atmosphere
for the first time.

This is a physics problem has been
around for half a millennium,

and we're potentially poised
to answer it.

That's what being
a modern species is,

beginning to understand
our universe,

beginning to understand
how the world works,

how the universe works.

It's a good reason to get up in the
morning, to actually look out

and say, "We can make a difference
by observing.

We can make the world just a little
bit more predictable

and maybe through that

we can harness a power
we haven't really understood

and that will give us the ability
to leave this solar system

before our sun burns out."

We are on the verge of understanding
the mysteries of the sun,

and doing so may give us the power
to one day embark upon

humanity's next great journey,

our journey to the stars.

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