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We're now in our sixth decade of hurling
things into space.

Intrepid little machines that have gone
where we could not.

So where to next?

What even more inconceivable odds will we
put them up against?

How about a mission to touch the sun?

To explore exotic oceans on distant moons?

To whiz at impossible speeds to
neighboring stars?

Preparing the way for humans to follow?

And in the end, to answer that ancient,
life and mind-altering question,

are we alone?

What we can say
today is that statistically,

there are more planets
out there than stars.

Every star has one or more planets.

If there's life elsewhere in
our solar system, that would

imply that life must be
common throughout the universe.

These are the stories of a
lonely blue marble, sending its

intrepid little machines to
places no human can yet go.

To the far ends of the solar system and
beyond.

We've been almost everywhere in our solar
system.

But we haven't been here.

To its most important body.

For obvious reasons.

It's ridiculously hot.

And the radiation streaming out of our
star is insanely dangerous.

But NASA has decided it's time to take on
the challenge.

They really do call it their mission to
touch the sun.

And it's as crazy as it sounds.

The rugged little probe that's going to
take on our star is called Solar Probe Plus.

And with a $1.5 billion
investment, it has to

be stronger than any
probe we've ever built.

Solar Probe Plus will fly.

It will eventually get into as close as 10
solar radii from the sun.

Earth's at 212 solar radii.

So it's very close to the sun.

Very hot.

So you have to hide everything behind a
thermal shield to protect it.

So that means that we can go to about 3.6
billion.

While moving at a mind-blowing 430 miles a
second, Solar Probe Plus will get seven

times closer to the sun's surface than any
other probe.

And actually dip into its atmosphere.

The corona.

So how on earth is a space probe supposed
to survive these impossible conditions

close up, above and beyond anything any
other craft has ever faced?

Somehow, incredibly, just four and a half
inches of carbon composite material will

shield the sensitive
instruments from the

2,500 degree Fahrenheit
heat it will encounter.

And the interior of the spacecraft will
remain at room temperature.

The sun's atmosphere, the corona, is
thousands of times hotter than its surface.

Which is a balmy 6,000 degrees.

It defies common sense.

Not to mention all the best computer
simulations in the world.

And somewhere in that seething cauldron,
the mysterious solar wind is born.

Energized.

And hurled away from the sun at a million
miles an hour.

This stream of charged
particles, like electrons

and protons, fills the
whole solar system.

Bombarding all of the planets.

Including ours, of course.

And I think the science community finally
concluded that unless we get the ground

truth with a solar probe in the vicinity
of the sun, we'll continue to argue about

modeling, whether this process is more
important than that, and so on.

One of the key questions
about the sun is that

the wind blowing out
from the sun is supersonic.

It's a million degrees,
yet it comes from a

surface which is only
thousands of degrees hot.

How does that happen?

What is the source of energy
that heats the corona and causes

it to expand at a million miles
per hour away from the sun?

And where the wind is picking up its speed
as it's leaving the sun?

The sun has tantrums.

Sending out raging flares
of solar wind that can light

up the sky at the Earth's
poles in glorious fashion.

Or wreak deadly havoc.

It's estimated that a big solar storm
hitting the Earth could wipe out much of

our electrical grid, causing several
trillion dollars worth of damage that

would take years, even a decade,
to recover from.

And we'd have maybe 12 hours to prepare.

Unless we learn enough about the sun to
predict its crazy weather.

Well, it turns out that if you have a big
solar eruption, that can perturb the

ionosphere and introduce
an error in the determination

of the location by GPS
satellites on the ground.

So, think of a situation where we have a
huge solar eruption, and we're relying on

guiding tens of thousands of flights onto
airports, and then all of a sudden,

you know, the thing gets shifted by four
or five meters, one way or another,

on the runway.

They'd better get a move on.

Solar Probe Plus has to launch in a 20-day
window in the summer of 2018.

And then it will take years of orbital
pirouettes, including seven Venus flybys.

Getting incrementally closer with each
pass.

Until finally the probe will skirt the
edge of the corona for three orbits.

Once Solar Plus One has touched the sun
and hopefully gathered enough data to help

us predict our star's terrifying moods,
it'll go out in a blaze of glory.

A swan dive into the sun for a fiery
death.

Transmitting valuable data as it makes the
ultimate sacrifice.

And touches the sun.

But you know, it's our own star.

And it is the first mission to a star.

For me, I mean, that would
be something that I could never

even dream of when I started
in this business 55 years ago.

But there is one glorious
question out there, beside which

all of the bright mysteries of
the sun pale in comparison.

That question is, of course, is there life
in the solar system?

Beyond the bounds of our beautiful,
thriving planet?

If there's life elsewhere in our solar
system, if life evolved independently on

two different worlds,
that would imply that

life must be common
throughout the universe.

So far, humanity's long-standing hopes of
finding life, even civilizations on our

nearest neighbors, have been crushed by
cruel realities.

Venus is a place of true fire and
brimstone, surface temperatures of 900

degrees, and pressures 92 times that on
the surface of the Earth.

There are no canal-filled cities full of
busy little green men on Mars.

Our brilliant rovers
have found evidence of

water, and perhaps
the building blocks of life.

But no critters.

It's all about the water.

But it's turning out to
be harder and harder to

find among the rocky little
planets nearest the Sun.

Everywhere on Earth that there's water,
there's life.

Oceans inside of Europa,
Enceladus, and other icy

satellites mean that
there's the possibility for life.

What we're trying to
understand in these icy moons, do

they have the ingredients
necessary for microbial life?

So water, the right
chemicals to build organic

molecules, and the chemical
energy that could power life.

And the giants, Jupiter and Saturn,
and their sisters, are massive,

seething, intensely
radioactive balls of gas,

completely inimical
to life as we know it.

Then, hope came from the most unexpected
of quarters.

We knew the gas giants had many moons.

But we expected them to be drab, pock-marked,
sterile worlds like our own moon.

We could not have been more wrong.

And while at JPL scientists could not turn
away from the groundbreaking images,

it was a graduate student who noticed there
was something more than meets the eye.

And she said, Hey!

Come and look at this!

And people said, Oh my God, volcano!

Before the reeling
earthlings could get their

heads around Io, they
had another nasty shock.

Europa.

This Jovian ice ball moon was shiny and
smooth, and beautifully etched with

patterns that looked like cracks in an icy
shell.

As though the ice were moving,
shattering, skating over something.

Something like a liquid water ocean.

We are really fascinated by the idea that
Europa and Enceladus have global oceans

underneath this icy outer layer on these
moons.

And we've been thinking
for a long time, well,

water's been there for
four billion plus years.

The Great Galileo Probe.

The first to orbit Jupiter.

Only added to the evidence of Europa's
internal seas.

And found indications
that the two other moons,

Ganymede and Callisto,
might have the same.

Europa and some
other moons of the outer

solar system are in
somewhat eccentric orbits.

They get a little farther and then a
little closer to their parent planet.

And this causes them to
stretch out a bit when they're

closer, and contract a bit
when they're farther away.

So this creates a flexing, tidal flexing
as they go around their parent planets.

And that generates heat.

Kind of like rubbing your hands together
generates heat.

Which can power the volcanoes at Io or
keep an ocean within Europa liquid today.

Finally, in 2013, the Hubble
telescope captured a plume of

what might be water spewing
out from the surface of Europa.

More recent tests hint that
those dark lines could be

salt, charred by the intense
radiation from Jupiter.

Salt water would mean that the ocean is in
contact with some sort of rocky,

mineral-rich seafloor.

For many astrobiologists, this was all
they needed to know.

Those oceans on those moons might also
have vent systems on the bottom.

Life might, in fact, have started there.

And so we've been thinking and thinking
about how do we get through those

kilometer-thick layers of ice to sample
the oceans?

This science is so vital,
NASA has already committed

to going to Europa
sometime in the early 2020s.

A radiation-tolerant spacecraft just
bristling with scientific equipment would

enter into a long, looping orbit around
Jupiter.

To perform repeated close flybys of
Europa.

Part of the equipment?

Ice-penetrating radar antennas that could
see into the inner ocean.

NASA is planning a new mission to Europa,
to orbit Jupiter and fly by Europa many,

many times with specialized instruments
designed to understand the detailed

composition of its surface
and of molecules that

are kicked up into Europa's
very tenuous atmosphere.

And to get at the detailed geology,
magnetic field, gravity field of Europa.

So we're going to
have a really good idea

of the potential
habitability of this world.

Some have conceived of ways
that we might someday drill or

melt down through Europa's
ice shell and into the water.

But first we want to understand how thick
is that ice shell?

Are there thin spots we might go into?

Are there lakes within the ice shell that
we might go into?

And we need to develop
the technologies that would be

required to get down to that
water and sample it directly.

But of course, that's all a tease for the
big event.

To dip a toe and maybe even dive into that
incredible ocean.

If we were to find life at Europa,
it would just revolutionize our

understanding of our place in the
universe.

No longer would we be alone.

But what if life needs liquid to evolve?

Not liquid water in particular.

That's where an underwater
submarine has emerged from

the incredible imagination
of planetary explorers.

One that would ply the seas of Titan,
a giant moon of Saturn.

Titan looks remarkably like Earth.

The difference is Titan is very cold.

So we've been surprised to find that Titan
has surface lakes.

Cassini has sent us some images of that
moon in false color representations.

And you squint at it a little bit and it
looks like Titan.

You're looking at Northern Michigan,
the lake country, right?

All of these lakes, but they're not water.

They're made out of organics.

They're made out of methane and ethane.

Because it's so cold there, water would be
frozen.

There is apparently water underneath the
surface of Titan.

It's mixed with ammonia.

So it's a really weird world.

There are a lot of interesting ideas for
future exploration of Titan.

There could be an orbiter.

There could be a balloon that floats
around in the atmosphere.

Even the possibility of
sending something to float

on or even investigate
under the lakes of Titan.

The Titan Mare Explorer is currently on
hold, but may be reactivated as part of a

larger Titan-Saturn mission in the later
2020s.

This clever boat-slash-submarine would
dive into Lygia Mare, the moon's largest

lake, and examine its chemistry,
depth and dynamics with an eye,

of course, toward the potential for
utterly alien methane-based life.

Wow.

Can we have a hydrocarbon-based life form?

People do speculate about that.

And what would it teach us?

It would go, Wow.

Wow.

There's another way to do biology.

Huh.

Why didn't it happen that way here?

It would be a great a-ha moment.

So, if there's life out there circling
around another star, how do we manage to

drop in with a casserole and welcome them
to the neighborhood?

The distances are daunting, to say the
least.

Picture our intrepid Voyager 1.

Four decades after its departure from
Earth, only now leaving our solar system,

at a leisurely pace of 38,000 miles per
hour.

If Voyager could keep going indefinitely
and was pointed in the right direction,

which it's not, it would take the veteran
probe a little over 70,000 years to make

the journey to our nearest star,
Alpha Centauri.

Seventy thousand years?

At that rate, nobody here on Earth is
holding their breath.

But what if we could get some very special
probes to that star in 20 years?

Believe it or not, some of the biggest
brains and the largest wallets in the

solar system have just announced their
intention to do just that.

People like Stephen Hawking and Russian
gazillionaire Yuri Milner.

But would you believe me?

I do know that the time
is to start now, given that

technology is available
to launch a little spaceship.

Yes, you heard that right.

Space chips.

Not space ships.

Dubbed Breakthrough Starshot, the $100
million initiative plans to send a

mothership into lower orbit, then toss a
payload of thousands of tiny,

centimeter-sized one-gram chips,
fitted with light sails, into open space.

Each chip will direct its
three-foot square solar

sail and wait for the
light to be turned on.

A really big light, a laser
beam of extraordinary

size and power,
fired up from Earth.

The idea that we could use light pressure
to accelerate these tiny spacecraft up to,

say, 20% of the speed of light,
so that we could reach the Alpha Centauri

system, that's what he was going for,
in 20 years or so.

The laser-propelled manor craft could
theoretically reach speeds of 20% of the

speed of light, covering
the 4.3 light-years to

Alpha Centauri in a
jaw-dropping two decades.

We've just been amazed by the images and
the data that have come back from flying

by Pluto with one spacecraft and a number
of instruments.

Can you imagine the riches that we would
get from data coming back from,

not one, but dozens or hundreds of these
little star chips going by the Proxima or

the Alpha Centauri system and taking a
close look at this planet?

So, okay, maybe technology
for the giant lasers isn't quite

lolling around in our
pockets yet, but it isn't far off.

Alas, poor Voyager.

Can you imagine the exchange as the swarm
shoots by our intrepid but antiquated

car-sized workhorse at 100 million miles
per hour, carrying equipment tens of

thousands of times more sophisticated,
in cornflake-sized packages?

Are they crazy?

Hey, they laughed at Jules Verne.

Envisioning a manned moon missile in 1865.

And look what happened a century later.

Who knows what we can accomplish in
another hundred years?

This is the century of
biology, but it's really

the century of biology
on Earth and beyond.

In this century, we're going to be
answering some of these questions about

life in our own solar system by going
there, by actually looking for biomarkers,

by flying through plumes
and bringing material back

from oceans underneath the
icy outer coverings of moons.

We're going to be exploring the nearest
stars.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
California Institute of Technology NASA

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California
Institute of Technology