Documentary / Reality
Humanity's race to mine asteroids and unlock boundless resources in deep space. Trailblazing companies spearhead cutting-edge engineering to potentially reshape the future.
Part 1 explains Asteroids and our relationship with them over the decades: NASA’s Dawn mission that revealed the secrets of the Asteroid Belt, plus ESA & JAXA’s missions that actually landed to study them in the 2000’s - and most importantly, NASA’s current OSIRIS-REx mission and their 2021 Lucy launch, to Jupiter’s trojans. Finally - explore a shocking discovery from 2017: Oumuamua, the first interstellar object detected from another star system to come this close to the Earth, and learn about the properties that asteroids contain that make them essential for deep-space travel.
Part 2 explores which are the best asteroids to mine - and how? In Space, using Zero Gravity - or on Earth? How can their metals and the liquids be used for deep space exploration, as propellant or pit stops - and are any of the metals useful on Earth? With a visit to the Colorado Center of Space Resources, we explore the engineering and technology needed to extract materials from the asteroids. We reveal the three top companies in the race - TransAstra and their autonomous spacecrafts, OffWorld and their autonomous mining robots, and Atem Engineering, who find solutions for discovery and assessment of Near-Earth Asteroids. Their goal is to extract and utilize resources in space to pave the way for human exploration - and the new space race is getting started.
Narrator
Cast
Cast

Newton's Apple is an American educational television program produced and developed by KTCA, and distributed to PBS stations in the United States that ran from 1983 to 1999. The show's title is based on the rumor of Isaac Newton sitting under a tree and an apple falling near him—or, more popularly, on his head—prompting him to ponder what makes things fall, leading to the development of his theory of gravitation. The show was produced by Twin Cities Public Television. For most of the run, the show's theme song was Ruckzuck by Kraftwerk, later remixed by Absolute Music. Later episodes of the show featured an original song. An occasional short feature appeared called "Science of the Rich and Famous" in which celebrities appeared to explain a science principle.

In Discovery Channel's top-rated show `Gold Rush', gold miners, inexperienced as some may be, hope to strike it rich in the wilds of Alaska and beyond. Some dismal summers result, filled with injuries, malfunctioning equipment and constant fighting among the greenhorn miners, yet serious cases of gold fever always trump any talk of giving up and sometimes leads to dreams being salvaged. The companion series `The Dirt' presents the inside scoop on behind-the-scenes relationships between such miners as brash youngster Parker Schnabel and longtime Yukon resident Tony Beets, as the quest to hit the mother lode never stops.

Richard Feynman, theoretical physicist, enjoys thinking aloud about the adventures science can offer. Here he uses physics to explain how the everyday world works, such as why rubber bands are stretchy, why tennis balls can't bounce forever, and what you're really seeing when you look in the mirror.