Original subtitles

Some machines are made to work,

but others, the most impossible machines in the world,

change the way things work.

Carving new paths, a one-of-a-kind plane.

No one else has tried to build an aircraft like this before.

A gravity-defying funicular

and an exceptional telescope.

Machines designed for a special purpose,

surpassing all expectation.

Ready? Now.

Deep in the Mojave Desert,

a remote facility is buzzing with activity.

This is Stratolaunch, an aerospace company on a mission

to design, manufacture and launch

air and space vehicles into orbit.

MAN Good ignition. Good ignition.

It's home to the largest

fixed-wing aircraft in the world,

a one-of-a-kind icon of the air.

Meet the Roc.

You cannot take your eyes off it.

It dominates the landscape.

It's just so large, and you can't even imagine its scale

until you're sitting out

in front of it on the runway.

Your eyes

are not deceiving you.

This plane has not one, but two bodies,

and attached to them is a wing

that's as long as a football field.

When you contrast the Roc's wingspan

to other large aircraft,

it totally dwarfs them in size.

Its wingspan is nearly 49 metres wider than a Boeing 747.

It's 50 metres wider than the air force's largest plane,

the C-5 Galaxy.

And it takes 19 fighter jets placed wingtip to wingtip

to equal the Roc's reach.

It's the biggest wing in the world.

It's hard to imagine that a giant like this

could ever be built,

let alone be able to take off and fly.

But that gigantic wing serves a gigantic purpose.

A wing that's this high and straight and long

combined with two underslung fuselages,

it's optimized for maximum lift.

That means the aircraft can take off while carrying

unbelievably heavy loads.

To take, you know, something this massive

and then, you know, put it in flight,

it's kind of magical.

The continuous wing is designed

not for what its two bodies hold,

but for what's between.

The Roc was named after a mythological flying bird,

and it was known for carrying elephants.

And so, that's very analogous to exactly what Roc is:

basically carrying very large, heavy objects,

which is exactly its purpose,

and why it's such a unique aircraft.

Like a mama bat carries its pups in flight,

the Roc transports vehicles into the air

from the underside of its enormous wing,

nestled between its two bottoms.

And the Roc is capable

of lifting incredibly heavy payloads.

Imagine a 500,000-pound rocket

strapped underneath the centre wing of this aircraft,

dropping it at 35,000 feet,

launching that rocket and carrying it up to orbit.

Booster rockets

like the Atlas or the Falcon

that launch satellites into orbit

use incredible amounts of energy to escape Earth's gravity.

Typically, more than 90% of a rocket's total weight is fuel.

The space shuttle was an even greater burden,

demanding even bigger boosters.

All these missions had to take place

on enormous launch sites, like Cape Canaveral

and the Kennedy Space Center.

That's where the Roc is different.

It has reimagined the concept of the rocket launch.

Rockets at launch site are typically constrained

to that geographic location.

So, they're stuck to that pad or that space,

where they have to take off from.

An air-launch platform like Roc is unique,

because we can take off from here in Mojave this morning,

but we could get out to any location

and drop a very large payload or a very large rocket.

The Roc can effectively turn any tarmac

into a shuttle launchpad.

No need for NASA.

As long as you have a large-enough runway,

the Roc can do its thing and launch rockets from anywhere.

The team of engineers,

test pilots and crew at Stratolaunch

are continuously pushing the boundaries of aviation.

It's been that way from the start.

They utterly reimagined aircraft.

A plane with two bodies that will haul rockets

to the edge of space

was conceived in 2010 as just a sketch on a napkin.

Initially, the Roc was designed

to carry large payloads and satellites into orbit,

but that evolved into the flight testing of hypersonic vehicles,

launching an eight-year journey into the stratosphere.

Building one of the biggest aircraft in the world

meant they needed a really big hangar.

The result was the 30,000-square-metre facility

at the Mojave Air and Space Port.

Things moved quickly,

with construction getting underway in 2011.

By using surplus aircraft and off-the-shelf parts

whenever possible,

they were able to expedite the process,

because they could be designing and building as they went along.

Design and build were done in parallel.

They didn't have to start from scratch.

All of the guts and the components inside

that make the aircraft function,

all were taken from two existing 747 aircraft.

We took all those 747 components,

the living, breathing systems.

We designed them into this new airframe structure,

and we made the aircraft come alive here in Mojave.

The Roc aircraft was designed

with two fuselages spread far apart.

It allows a very large space, such that

we can carry these payloads up to 500,000 pounds.

So, they look identical.

Only the right one has a cockpit.

It's largely preserved from one of the scrapped 747s.

You've got bits like the throttles, the foot pedal,

even some of the old analog displays.

It's a bit strange-looking,

but having twin bodies provides balance and stability

for that very large wingspan.

Legacy components were married

to state-of-the-art ones.

It's the jumbo jet, reborn.

The structure of the plane,

the bones that hold it all together, had to be new.

And it's made of some of the largest

composite components ever built in the world,

and they were made by hand by fabricators onsite.

This is an aircraft formed from a wild imagination

to carry two fuselages, tons of fuel and six jet engines,

not to mention the other aircraft

or rocket it would carry.

It had to be strong just to get off the ground.

It's a pretty bold idea.

No one else has tried to build

an aircraft like this before

just because of the sheer undertaking.

There comes a point in every test program

where you do all the design work,

and you do all your work on the computer

and you do all the ground testing in the world.

But that day comes that you just-- You just have to go fly.

And so, that day came April 13th, 2019.

It was a huge day.

We all came out

and saw an amazing moment:

the world's largest aircraft take off

from Mojave Air and Space Port.

The Roc is rated for a maximum takeoff weight

of nearly 600 tons.

Getting that much weight into the air

requires a lot of engines.

Roc has not one, not two,

but six engines.

We can't move the aircraft without the engines,

so we got three on either wing.

These are our Pratt & Whitney 4056s.

Put out a lot of thrust.

We need a lot of thrust to lift this airplane.

This is the most thrust that any aircraft has ever flown with.

It's got 56,000 pounds of thrust

from each of those six engines.

Because the aircraft,

made up of two planes, is so heavy,

the thrust coming from its six engines simultaneously

is essential.

When you kick in all six engines, it's fairly quick.

It gives you a little bit of a kick in the pants,

and then it starts just bouncing all over the place.

It starts getting very dynamic.

Think of it like letting go of an inflated balloon.

The air rushing out the back

causes the balloon to move forward.

The heavier the aircraft, the more thrust is needed

to overcome its weight and drag.

The gleaming exterior of the plane might be quite new,

but the engines themselves are getting their second chance.

They're a little bit older engines,

so these engines have a lot of hours on them.

But yeah. They still work really well for us.

These jumbo vets

are not ready for the scrapyard yet,

but they demand more inspection

to ensure they're ready for takeoff.

Engine inspection's

one of the first and last things we do.

Constantly doing work on these guys. Making sure

everything looks good. Making sure everything runs well.

We do maintenance on them constantly.

It's not just the engines

that are meticulously checked.

Every inch of the aircraft is inspected

to ensure a successful launch.

We're going to start doing the power-on checks.

Primarily, we move the aircraft axes.

Make sure the runners, the ailerons, elevators

are all moving the way they're supposed to.

Flight systems pressure looks good.

By the time we're done with our testing,

we'll check all 14 flaps, all 12 ailerons

with four elevators, four runners, 24 brakes.

And we've checked all of that

for us to be ready to go fly tomorrow.

The Roc was designed to bridge

the gravity gap between the ground and space,

providing a launchpad to earth orbit.

Now, it has a new passenger:

a machine designed not for space,

but for speeds that were once unimaginable

in Earth's atmosphere. Forget supersonic.

These are hypersonic.

Hypersonic vehicles can travel

at a velocity greater than Mach 5.

That's five times the speed of sound.

It can revolutionize military and civilian transportation

by providing unprecedented speed and manoeuvrability.

That's unbelievably fast.

A trip from New York City to Los Angeles at Mach 5?

That'd take you 30, maybe 40 minutes.

For Stratolaunch,

this meant creating their own hypersonic vehicles.

In 2016, 70 engineers

toiled over four years to design the first operational model:

the Talon-A rocket.

The Stratolaunch team uses the Talon

to conduct high-speed experiments

for both military and commercial applications.

It's being tested to see how it holds up

to immense heat-generating, hypersonic flight,

as well as testing for advanced sensors, instrumentation

and guidance and navigation systems.

So, Talon-A is a reusable hypersonic test bed.

It's fully autonomous and unmanned.

So, the Talon is preloaded with a preflight trajectory,

and it's used to fly various payloads and technologies.

Usually, rockets are expendable vehicles that don't come back.

We've all seen rockets that explode,

burn up in space or crash into the ocean.

But what's amazing is the Talon-A was designed as

a reusable rocket that can fly mission after mission

and safely land back on a runway.

MAN Ready? Now.

The Talon-A is the result

of humanity's desire

to be the fastest thing on the planet.

But even this hypersonic vehicle needs a boost.

Talon-A is unable to take off straight from the ground.

Air launch capability is pretty simple.

You basically take an aircraft,

and you take another aircraft

and you mount them to each other.

You take off from a conventional runway

and you get up to a flying altitude.

And you drop that other aircraft off of the Roc aircraft.

The Roc has a unique way

of cradling its precious cargo.

Right now, we are under the wing of the Roc launch platform,

and right to the right of me is our pylon system.

The pylon system is used for connecting

the Talon-A vehicle with the Roc,

and it is what allows us to safely separate

when we're at high altitudes.

The pylon is a specialized mounting structure

located on the centre wing,

and it's where the hypersonic vehicles

are attached to the Roc.

The pylon has its own mini-wing

2.1 metres below the bottom of the main wing.

This keeps the rocket at a safe distance

when it's time to launch.

The pylon has a series of winches

to load the hypersonic vehicle

onto its platform from the ground.

The Talon is basically hitching a ride

on the coolest plane in the world.

This is what the Roc was built to do.

Once the winches raise the Talon

up below the Roc's wing,

the vehicle is attached to the pylon

at three different points by a series of

explosive metal alloy bolts.

After takeoff, when the Roc has reached 35,000 feet,

the flight engineer triggers the detonation.

The explosive within the bolts ignites cleanly,

breaking the connection between the Talon and the pylon.

Once the Talon drops from the Roc,

its rocket booster engine

shoots it across the stratosphere.

And when it completes its flight,

a navigation system operated by master control

guides the Talon back down to earth for its landing.

The Talon is the flash,

but the true MVP of the mission is the Roc,

making all of this possible.

Today, the Roc is running a test flight

to get it ready for its next rocket-launching mission.

This airplane is going to do something

that it has not done in the history of its existence.

It's going to do a touch-and-go for the first time.

It's going to be exciting. Everybody's excited to do

anything with this airplane for the first time.

A touch-and-go is a training manoeuvre

where a pilot lands an aircraft on a runway,

and then immediately takes off again

without stopping or exiting the runway.

Touch-and-goes are essential.

What it allows the pilot to do

is practise the two most critical portions of a flight:

takeoff and landing.

This is going to be its only 25th flight ever.

We're still kind of developing the airplane.

So, it's kind of cool to do it for the first time

and really feel like you're a part of

the development of the airplane.

With only 25 flights

under that big wing,

there is no such thing as routine.

Each mission is treated like the first.

Every component is checked and double-checked.

So, preflight check, you know,

we do a pretty thorough job.

There's a lot to check in this giant airplane.

General overall integrity, tires, overall servicing.

I'm kind of just looking over it as kind of a final check.

The preflight check isn't just for the airplane.

The tarmac is checked as well.

Something as small as a stray screw on the runway

could be disastrous.

We're doing a FOD walk.

We're just picking up any of the debris on the pad

that could cause issues, get stuck in tires and stuff.

FOD prevention's a big deal in aviation.

F-O-D is short for "foreign object debris."

A FOD walk is a safety procedure where ground crew

find and remove any objects

that could be dangerous to the aircraft.

Even the smallest object or debris on the tarmac

could be catastrophic for the mission.

In 2000, a piece of debris on the tarmac

punctured a tire on the Air France Concorde.

After takeoff, pieces from that tire struck the fuel tank,

resulting in a fire and the plane crashing,

killing all 109 people on board.

That's why FOD checks are so vital.

They ensure that this one-of-a-kind aircraft

gets safely airborne.

I'm looking for any, like, big rocks

or anything that could get stuck in an aircraft tire.

Like, that's actually what I'm looking for.

That's an aircraft fastener.

So, this could be off of a panel.

it could be off of anything.

Somehow ended up on the ramp.

This is the kind of stuff we're trying to prevent.

WOMAN Final inspection is complete

and everything looks really good. We're good to fly.

Once the FOD walk

and all the safety checks are done, it's go time.

The plane is lined up on the runway.

MAN Test control,

you're cleared in, nine-bravo.

All systems are go...

Parking brake is released.

- Are we ready to go? - Ready.

...and the Roc is cleared for takeoff,

ready for a short but critical journey.

It's a cool feeling as soon as you get airborne.

It's kind of like being in love.

It's just a good feeling.

Makes you feel a little warm inside, I guess.

The pilots circle back and line up with the runway.

With cool efficiency and steady hands,

they manoeuvre the Roc for multiple touch-and-goes.

PGA Kazulu, runway 26,

wind 2-1-0 at six, cleared to land.

After a final successful landing,

the Stratolaunch crew gives itself a round of applause.

Another milestone for this magnificent machine.

Test went very well today.

Nice and smooth. We had no surprises.

Very successful,

and another one in the books for Roc.

The Roc's game-changing combination

of payload capacity

and support of hypersonic flight is revolutionary

and has reshaped aviation.

I'm extremely excited about the future of hypersonics.

There's so many different applications out there,

and ways that we can use it to better our society.

The Roc is one of the mightiest machines ever flown,

pushing the boundaries of aerospace design and technology.

What started as a sketch on a napkin

has lifted aviation to new heights,

and when this titan takes off,

it truly is the impossible made possible.

The Stoosbahn funicular

is a one-of-a-kind scenic ride in the Swiss Alps,

a unique vehicle unlike any other on the planet,

whizzing passengers up the steepest tracked incline

in the world.

It's the world record.

With jaw-dropping angles

and breathtaking mountain views,

it's a marvel of gravity-defying engineering.

A funicular is a cable-operated train system

that's designed to go up and down

very steep hills and mountains.

Located in central Switzerland,

the funicular's job is to carry passengers

from the valley town of Schwyz

up to the small mountain town of Stoos.

This one-of-a-kind climb of 744 metres to the very top

takes only seven minutes.

For a terrain this steep,

the funicular is the best option.

The Stoosbahn ascends up the mountain

in what seems like a near vertical incline,

a 110% gradient.

That gradient is so steep

that if you tried to drive a car up this, it would topple.

Pulling the two carriages of the funicular

up and down the dizzying mountain heights

takes a mighty engine to handle the heavy load.

That's the main drive. It's an electric engine.

This one have 1,000 kilowatts power,

and we have two of them that we can drive at the same time.

We need a lot of power

because of the steepness from the funicular.

Each motor produces enough energy

to simultaneously operate 250 escalators,

and these motors do it all electrically.

The advantage of having an electric engine

is it has a smaller footprint than a large diesel engine.

It also means greater efficiency.

It's more reliable, and obviously, it's cleaner energy.

So, we're cutting down on emissions.

A lot of people think that

because electric engines are small and quiet,

they don't have a lot of power. But don't be fooled.

They pack a ton of energy and a ton of force

relative to their size,

especially compared to internal combustion engines.

The motor's power enables the movement of up to

1500 passengers per hour in each direction.

A steep climb demands more power.

This tourist attraction packs a major traction.

We are looking at two drag wheels

and the main rope.

The main rope is fixed on both sides

from each train.

The cable is around three and a half kilometres long.

It attaches the two trains

that we can move both at the same time.

The large cable goes from one train, up the mountain

and around a pulley system attached to a huge wheel,

and then back down to the other train.

That means that as one goes up the slope,

the other one goes down.

Basically, each train acts as a counterweight for the other.

The descending car's weight

helps pull the other one up the mountain,

and it's all assisted by the electric motors.

This funicular travels a path so steep,

it needs a special kind of passenger compartment.

Each car adjusts according to the change in pitch.

Even when the ascent is almost vertical,

passengers feel grounded.

We have an hydraulic system that ensures that we're always level.

Each cabin gets balanced out separately.

We have to rotate the cabin,

because we want to have the level when we walk in.

Otherwise, we all fell on one side.

Having the ability to handle such a sheer climb

while keeping the funicular's passengers upright

is all made possible because of its innovative hydraulics.

Each cabin is equipped with two hydraulic cylinders.

As the funicular travels along the track, the cylinders respond

to the steep gradient of the terrain.

They adjust simultaneously,

levelling the cabins within the frame.

The hydraulics in sure that

whether you are going up or down the track,

the cabin and its passengers stay level at all times.

A level cabin is a big departure from traditional funiculars,

which use fixed cars

that make boarding more difficult on sloped platforms.

on the Stoosbahn, you can get in

without any barriers, so it's more accessible.

When it comes to mountains,

getting up the hill is all part of the fun.

But controlling the descent...

Is paramount.

Brakes are

the most important thing,

because when we have something that's wrong or it's broken,

the funicular has to stop,

and this is our chance to stop it.

If you're travelling vertical up the side of a mountain,

the brakes better do their job.

And when it comes to brakes,

redundancy is the name of the game.

You want as many fail-safes in place as possible,

which is why the Stoosbahn is equipped with multiple brakes.

We have here the safety brakes,

two on this side and two on the other side.

It's like the last chance that we can stop the funicular.

We need four of them because on the steepest point,

we have to be sure that we can always stop the ride.

One incredible thing about the Stoosbahn

is that its regenerative braking system

captures energy and converts it into heat.

That heat is then used

by the rooms in the hotel at the top of the mountain.

The Stoosbahn is an essential means of transit,

but it's not the first funicular to travel up this mountain.

The tiny village of Stoos

started as a settlement for agriculture and farming,

but it gained popularity in the early 1930s

as a popular skiing site.

But since Stoos is a car-free village,

it was very difficult to actually get to.

So, in 1933 the first funicular opened, connecting Stoos

to the town further down the mountain.

It was revolutionary for its era,

the only funicular in the world

to feature fully aluminum carriages.

In 1933, that was cutting-edge technology,

since most early funiculars used boxcars made out of wood.

The original Schwyz-Shoos funicular had fixed cabins.

It operated for 84 years, but as technology reached new heights,

what was cutting-edge became obsolete.

For its time,

the original funicular did an admirable job.

But like many pieces of machinery,

it's out with the old, in with the new.

Innovation is key.

Construction of the modern funicular

began in 2013.

To build the steepest funicular in the world

was a monumental task.

There was a lot of challenges in the construction.

For example, drill heads would get stuck in the hard rock.

They had to use a custom-designed machine

that laid prefabricated concrete tracks

while moving uphill.

The funicular's opening

was two years later than initially scheduled,

and took four years in total to complete.

By the time the project was finished in 2017,

it ended up costing 54 million euros.

The new funicular means that a larger number of passengers

get to enjoy this incredible ride.

Over 500,000 people travel on the Stoosbahn

every year,

but it isn't just a tourist attraction.

The funicular is a lifeline for the alpine locals.

It's the fastest and easiest means of travel

between Schwyz below and Shoos above, and vice-versa.

The village is pretty remote.

There's only one road

to go up to the village of Stoos.

People who live up here, they are dependent on the funicular.

Otherwise, a lot of people

who live up the in the village, they can't get home.

And the Stoosbahn moves more than just people.

It serves as the delivery service

for everything the village depends upon.

The funicular is designed

to transport all kinds of cargo and materials up the mountain:

things like concrete, sand or stones,

but then also, food, beverages, luggage.

Anything that people need has to get carried up the mountain.

The funicular is used for transporting

for the material that gets brought up.

If someone wants to build a house or something like that,

then all the building materials

gets transported up with the funicular.

The funicular can carry 136 people

and up to one ton of freight each journey.

Without passengers, the funicular can transport

up to six tons of material on its freight platform.

That's enough tonnage to build the framework of a small house.

Without it, people would have a problem,

and it will take around two or three hours

to hike up the mountain.

But it's a really steep hike and not really a comfortable one.

And if you have a lot of material, yeah.

It's going to be difficult.

The Stoos funicular operates through every season,

and this being Switzerland,

it of course runs like clockwork.

We operate regardless of the weather.

It doesn't matter how much it snows,

how much it winds.

The Stoosbahn is a technological marvel,

a smooth and seamless seven-minute climb

into the clouds.

It's quite spectacular,

and the engineering is fantastic and amazing.

This machine is a triumph

of human ingenuity and problem-solving.

Mounting a 110-degree incline

has pushed the boundaries of funicular design.

Whether you live in Schwyz or Stoos

or you're just visiting,

this futuristic funicular is like nothing else in the world.

At the top of Mount Graham, more than 3,000 metres up,

there's a mechanical marvel...

...eight storeys high and 13 times heavier than a house.

A pair of specialized eyes that see deep into the heavens,

capturing light that has travelled billions of years

to reach us.

This is the Large Binocular Telescope,

the LBT.

The reason the Large Binocular Telescope

was placed at the top of Mount Graham

in southeastern Arizona was to take advantage of

its high elevation, dry climate and lack of light pollution.

These are all essential for maximizing

the performance of the telescope.

LBT is the only one

binocular telescope in the world.

It is unique, because it allows

with optics to observe the same part of the sky

with double the resolution.

We study everything from nearby stars,

newly forming planets around those stars,

to some of the most distant objects in the universe.

The optical technology in the LBT

is so incredible that it produces images

up to 10 times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope.

With its 360° view,

the LBT has made numerous discoveries

and revealed the nature of the Hercules dwarf galaxy,

a companion to the Milky Way.

And it also provides images of planets

from outside our solar system, known as exoplanets

that are more than 127 light years away from Earth.

The telescope is important and powerful

because we can take images very similar

to the ones you only could get when

you go very close to the planet with the spacecraft.

Recording never-before-seen images

of galaxies and stars is the strength of the LBT.

But none of that is possible if the telescope doesn't have

the ability to move quickly and efficiently.

The LBT can be configured in 20 minutes or less

with the help of four powerful motors.

We're standing about 30 feet away from the telescope.

Those silver C-rings there are what the telescope slides on

to be able to point down all the way to horizon,

and then all the way up right now,

pointing straight up into the sky.

A few molecules' thick of oil

is going to support the 650 tons of that telescope.

The LBT uses high-pressure oil bearings

to essentially float the massive structure

holding the primary mirrors.

The oil evenly distributes their colossal weight,

ensuring smoother movement

and eliminating any friction that could jeopardize

the telescope's image-capturing capability.

Two small motors on each side are going to drive those gears

and bring that telescope down to where it's pointing

straight out the front of the enclosure.

So, what you're going to see is 650 tons of steel and glass

and electronics and instruments in motion.

While the telescope moves to track the skies,

the enormous 1800-ton structure surrounding the telescope

is also moving.

Because the building

and the telescope move independently,

they have to stay in sync so that the telescope operator

operates the telescope and the building basically follows

the telescope to stay in sync,

so that the openings in the building

are where the telescope is pointing.

Both the telescope and the supporting structure

match each other's movements

in a perfectly synchronized ballet of motion.

The telescope rotates on an inner rail,

while the building itself rotates on an outer rail.

No wobbles, jittering, or lag.

It's all perfectly smooth, so the LBT can seamlessly capture

the perfect images.

The fortress of the LBT sits on the bogey level.

This is where you find all the wheels

that support its rotating housing.

We're here on the top of the concrete pier

that supports this 2,000-ton enclosure above us

that wraps around the telescope.

And behind me, this is the bogey,

one of four that allows that building to move.

That's an enormous ask for these wheels.

They are attached to a singular frame,

but the weight they have to bear is staggering,

with each of the 20 wheels supporting 91 tons.

The reason it's moving is because the telescope

is being pointed to a certain direction,

and the building is going to follow the telescope.

So, the bogey drives are keeping the building aligned

with the view of the telescope.

The components

that make the LBT scientifically invaluable are

the two eight-and-a-half-metre diameter mirrors

mounted side-by-side at its base.

This telescope has the largest mirrors in existence.

Telescope performance

is a function of its size, primarily because a larger lens

or mirror collects more light and provides higher resolution.

So, a bigger lens allows astronomers

to see fainter and more distant objects

and produce sharper and more detailed images.

Together, the resolution of these two mirrors

is greater than that of the telescopes twice their size.

The twin mirrors of the LBT

were cast at the University of Arizona in 1997 and 2000.

Molten glass was spun in a huge oven,

forming a natural bowl-shaped curve

while also creating a honeycomb structure inside

for strength and reduced weight.

This made the mirrors more thermally stable

than solid glass.

These high-precision mirrors

are the key to the entire operation.

They allow the Large Binocular Telescope

to pinpoint specific locations

that scientists want to learn more about,

then collect and focus

the light they pull in from outer space

to create the stunning images that the LBT is known for.

The balancing system of the LBT

helps it remain fixed on one spot in space.

As the light from the stars passes through the atmosphere,

turbulence in the air distorts and blurs the light.

Adaptive optics corrects for the blurring

using secondary mirrors with magnets on their back

that change the mirror's shape

more than 1,000 times per second.

The corrected light is deflected

towards the centre of the telescope,

where it's combined and captured

as high-resolution images by the camera.

The secondary mirrors

are actually remarkable, because they can reverse the distortion.

It's very similar to noise-cancelling headphones

and sound waves.

This is the first implementation of this technology

on any telescope in the world

It allows us to make incredible measurements

that rival what you can do from space.

The mirrors can read the chemical fingerprints

or the unique patterns of stars, planets, galaxies,

and even black holes,

turning a faint glimmer of light

into a clear window to the universe.

Every time the observatory dome opens

to let the telescope scan the skies,

the primary mirrors are exposed to the elements.

The primary mirror

is very fragile. It's all glass.

And it takes about three years

to produce another mirror

if something happens to this one.

The amount of time that we would lose if something happened?

It would be extremely expensive.

With the universe's secrets

at stake, these oversized peepers

need to be cleaned and refreshed regularly,

and that requires an incredibly specialized machine.

Enter the bell jar,

a nine-metre-in-diameter vacuum chamber

that is used to resurface the mirrors.

Every year,

one of the two primary mirrors gets a facelift,

where the bell jar applies

a fresh reflective coating of aluminum.

With most telescopes,

their mirror would be cleaned in a lab,

but with the LBT, its mirrors stay on the telescope.

This eliminates the massive undertaking

of bringing them down the mountain

in order to carry out this process.

The cleaning phase

is the first step for resurfacing the mirrors.

All the aluminum is chemically stripped away.

Then, the 23-ton bell jar is hoisted up by a crane.

It's carefully put in place

on top of the mirror,

creating a pressurized seal to begin the process.

So, what you're doing is you're creating a vacuum chamber

between this structure, the bell jar,

and the primary mirror of the Large Binocular Telescope.

These are vacuum pumps, and they're controllers

to pull the vacuum, and it pulls all the air

and the moisture out of the bell jar.

Getting a good vacuum is critical to a good re-coat.

Once the vacuum seal is complete,

a small quantity of aluminum is vaporized

and falls in a layer across the mirror.

This aluminum is what gives the mirrors

their highly reflective capabilities.

In order to work at their optimum capacity,

the instruments of the LBT

have to be kept at a temperature

of -196° Celsius.

If they were to overheat,

the images taken by the telescope

would have digital noise or distortion, making them useless.

So, liquid nitrogen is used to keep things chilly.

Liquid nitrogen

is a perfect plan for sensitive instruments

due to its low temperature

and its ability to absorb large amounts of heat.

This makes it ideal for uses in medicine, science

and electronics, where precision and stability are critical.

This is what cools

the instruments on the telescope.

Every morning and every afternoon,

we have to transfer out of these

to the instruments that are up on the telescope.

With an instrument, it creates heat from the electronics,

and it distorts the pictures if they see a heat trace.

So, we must cool them all down.

A heat trace appears as an increase in thermal noise

or static in the detector,

which can overwhelm the signal from faint sources in the sky.

The LBT isn't just cold.

It's the coolest set

of astronomical binoculars on earth,

but building them was a huge undertaking.

The steel skeleton of the telescope

took shape in Italy in 2002,

and the massive structure was shipped across the ocean

and up the mountain to be assembled.

The enormous mirrors were created in Arizona,

but they too had to be transported up the mountain,

the last stretch of which is a very winding route.

In 2008, the LBT

was finally put to work, ogling the universe

with both eyes open to record the incredible images

that have made it famous in the science community.

This is an international project.

The telescope is a collaboration between

the scientific institutions from the USA, Italy and Germany.

Italian scientists

have made the LBT even more powerful

by adding a system of instruments called the SHARK.

The SHARK is made up of

sophisticated optical instruments

that increase the visual capacity of the telescope

and produce incredibly high-resolution images.

The SHARK is optimized to capture not only visible light,

but also near-infrared light.

Near-infrared light has wavelengths just beyond

the red end of the visible spectrum,

making it invisible to the human eye.

So, these instruments are highly sensitive.

It gives us the most magnification

in the world of astronomy.

The SHARK collects the light through the telescope by means

of two mirrors that sends the light inside the instrument.

We look at the brightness

at every specific colour, which contains

a huge amount of information about these objects

we can see sometimes billions of light years away.

This is the most important instrument,

because it exploits the potential of the telescope

and gives us the maximum magnification we can achieve

with the Large Binocular Telescope.

It also can record a very faint object

close to bright sources.

For example, we can see a fly

flying around a street lamp

from 400 kilometres far away.

In humanity's eternal quest

to understand our place in the cosmos,

few machines have proven mightier than

the Large Binocular Telescope.

This telescope is a time machine.

It takes light to travel

from those objects out in space to reach us.

As we look to more and more distant objects,

we're looking further and further back in time.

We can look back through 90% of the history of the universe

with this telescope.

This set of eyes captures

the past, present and future of our universe.

Every day, the LBT reminds us

that Earth's mightiest machines

aren't only built to conquer land, sea or sky,

but to stretch our vision across time itself.