In every direction...
In every moment...
We are surrounded by wonder.
For thousands of generations,
we have looked up to the night sky...
And dreamt about what might be out there.
Now we are beginning a voyage...
to visit these distant places...
And discover what lies in the great expanse
beyond our home.
High above us,
the International Space Station
orbits the Earth.
Within this tangle of wires and windows
is our first permanent home in the cosmos.
And for the crew who float on board,
it's a whole new way of life.
Here, there is no up or down...
No day or night as we experience on Earth.
It's the ultimate cocoon.
Further out than here,
space travel becomes a more formidable challenge.
Past the Moon,
only machines have ventured.
But they have captured stunning images
of the beauty that lies beyond.
Saturn...
the jewel of the solar system.
Probes sent here are cloaked
in protective golden blankets...
Keeping them safe
as they survey this majestic giant.
In its orbit...
we've discovered 82 moons.
Its rings stretch 175,000 miles across...
But are typically just 30 feet tall.
With the help of our robotic explorers...
We're getting the first close-up glimpse
of our planetary neighbors...
In all their complexity and beauty.
Only two human-made craft have ever traveled
past the boundaries of our solar system...
Into the Milky Way Galaxy that surrounds us.
They carried with them memories
and messages from our world...
Hello from the children of Planet Earth.
Greetings from humanity,
perhaps one day to be discovered.
There are over 100 billion stars...
strewn like dust across our galactic home...
And we now believe almost all these stars
have planets of their own.
This is TRAPPIST-1...
A small, dim star...
with seven planets in its orbit.
We've detected thousands of planetary systems
like this one all over the galaxy.
We can't yet see these worlds in detail.
But we can infer what they might be like.
55 Cancri E...
A planet of profound contrasts.
One side of this giant world
is permanently locked,
facing towards its parent star.
Its surface likely molten.
The other side sits in perpetual darkness...
Landscapes destined
to an eternity without light.
Out there in the galaxy...
Are endless permutations
of texture and form...
Worlds encased in ice...
Planets wrapped entirely in ocean...
Wonders...
waiting to be explored.
Deeper into the Milky Way Galaxy...
we uncover beauty and mystery
on a larger scale.
This the Gum 29 nebula.
At its center is a cluster
of 3,000 newborn stars.
As these bright, young stars burn,
they radiate energy outward...
Sculpting the surrounding gas and dust
into this magnificent sight...
Stretching light-years across...
But this nebula...
is just one among many.
Countless of these stellar nurseries
fill our galaxy...
Each a unique work of art.
The scale of the Milky Way Galaxy
is almost inconceivable.
Traveling at the speed of light,
it would take 100,000 years
to cross from one side of this vast disk
to the other.
But our galaxy is not alone.
Two and a half million light-years away...
Is the Andromeda Galaxy...
A collection of one trillion stars.
We sit within a greater...
grander universe.
We have captured images of galaxies
of every kind...
Scattered across impossible distances.
Every point of light here is not a star...
but a galaxy.
These are places we can see...
But will never reach.
We're only left to imagine the wonders
that might exist out there...
Symphonies written...
Love stories told...
Unimaginable beings...
With unknowable dreams.
Back home...
Our place in this universe...
Tiny...
And magnificent...
A drop...
That has just begun to see the ocean.