Space

Voyager 1 and 2: Still operating after 40 years in the depths of space. Voyager 1 is currently some 20 billion kilometres from Earth travelling at 15.5 kilometres a second. It takes 19 hours for a signal from the spacecraft's 20 watt transmitter to reach home. Voyager 2 is 17 billion kilometres away and will soon leave the Solar System. Launched in 1977, the twin spacecrafts have explored the giant planets and their strange moons, investigated the boundary of the Solar System and changed how we see our place in the Universe. The probes even carry a message for aliens in the form of a golden record.

Retired NASA astronaut Ron Garan meets many of the original team still working on the mission, nursing the twin spacecraft through their final years.

Photo: The Voyager 2 spacecraft passes by Saturn in 1981 Credit: NASA

In 1990 the Hubble Telescope was launched into space, but the first pictures it sent back to earth were out of focus. Originally broadcast 23 April 2010.

Why African nations are so keen to journey into the future as a space-going continent. Space scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock visits Nigeria, the birthplace of her father, to explore the passionate desire among some to fly against the continent’s impoverished stereotype and join the space race. And, what of the financial commitment required to achieve these dreams in countries where it is sometimes a struggle to keep the lights on?

"Quite a few false starts have been made in Africa," wrote the Ugandan philosopher and writer Taban Lo-Liyong, "...but most of us know the direction we are going – straight into the 21st Century. And to arrive there we are not going to go the way our grandparents would have gone – on foot and by canoe. We shall fly, we shall go by missiles, we shall go with the white man, we shall go with the yellow man. And we shall go by all means."

We follow this poetic, aspirational spirit through the continent’s history, from speaking to the South African hoping to be the first black African in space, to a surprising and touching example of amateur space exploration in 1960s Zambia. What do these ambitions mean, and who believes in them?

This programme was first broadcast in October 2016.

(Photo: Back dropped by planet Earth the International Space Station (ISS) is seen from Nasa space shuttle Endeavour, May 2011. Credit: Nasa)

The first footsteps on the Moon were one giant step for 'man', but from the early days of aeronautics women have also been involved in space travel. Presenter, pilot and aspiring astronaut Wally Funk pays tribute to the pioneers, meets some of those involved within today’s space industry, and hears from the woman who might be among the crew for the first human mission to Mars.

Wally has first hand experience of the early days of space travel in America. She undertook secret tests to become an astronaut in 1961 and, along with 12 other female pilots, passed the extremely tough physical tests to become an unofficial member of the ‘Mercury 13’ – the women who, given a chance, could have gone into space before Russia’s Valentina Tereshkova made history.

Wally hears from astronauts Jessica Meir, Helen Sharman, Eileen Collins and Samantha Cristoforetti; mission control flight director Mary Lawrence; space historian David J Shayler; and shares her 1961 astronaut medical tests with NASA flight surgeon Shannan Moynihan. Over 50 years after those tests, Wally is still flying (she takes her producer above Dallas in a Cessna) but she is yet to get into space. However Wally is on the waiting list for one of the first commercial space tourism flights and is prepared to make history as yet another woman with the right stuff. This is a Boffin Media production for BBC World Service.

Salute Soviet Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova. In June 1963, she boarded Vostok 6 at Baikonur cosmodrome and went into orbit. Originally broadcast 21 June, 2013.