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The Sky at Night is a monthly documentary television programme on astronomy produced by the BBC.

The show had the same permanent presenter, Patrick Moore, from its first broadcast on 24 April 1957 until 7 January 2013. The latter date was a posthumous broadcast, which followed Moore’s death on 9 December 2012. This made it the longest-running programme with the same presenter in television history. Many early episodes are missing, either because the tapes were wiped, thrown out, or because the episode was broadcast live and never recorded in the first place. Beginning with the 3 February 2013 edition, the show was co-presented by Lucie Green and Chris Lintott. Since December 2013 Maggie Aderin-Pocock has been a presenter. The programme’s opening and closing theme music is “At the Castle Gate”, from the incidental music to Pelléas et Mélisande, written in 1905 by Jean Sibelius, performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham.

This episode:
Maggie Aderin, self-proclaimed lunar-tic, examines Nasa’s Artemis II mission: the first crewed journey towards the moon in more than 50 years. It’s a mission designed to carry astronauts around the moon’s far side and safely home again, marking the furthest human beings will have travelled into space. While the programme explores the mission’s progress on and off the launch pad as Artemis II prepares for its next attempt at lift-off, George Dransfield visits Imperial College London to speak with Dr Helen Sharman, who became the first British astronaut in 1991 when she travelled to the Mir space station. Helen offers insight into what it’s like to wait for launch and why the moon is once again drawing the world’s attention.

But the renewed focus on the moon goes beyond sending people there. A series of robotic landers has recently attempted to reach the lunar surface, with mixed outcomes. To understand this new phase of exploration, Maggie heads to the Open University to meet Dr Simeon Barber, who is developing his latest lunar instrument. Not every mission carrying his instruments has succeeded, but as he explains, setbacks are as informative as successes and form part of the fast-moving international effort to return to the moon. But it’s not only astronauts and robots that get the chance to study our closest neighbour. We all see it as we go about our everyday lives, and Pete Lawrence is on hand to highlight what to look out for if you pause for a moment, glance upward and take in its quiet beauty.

It is the slow and steady progress of China’s Chang’e programme that brought back the first samples from the moon’s far side in 2024. Chris Lintott meets Professor Yang Li at University College London to find out what those samples are telling Yang and his team, and the clues it gives us to a long-standing puzzle: the stark differences between the near and far sides of our lunar neighbour. These developing insights only strengthen the desire to explore further. To understand what Artemis II might contribute, Maggie speaks with Nasa’s Dr Kelsey Young, who leads the mission’s lunar science objectives. She explains what the first people to see the moon up close in more than half a century are trained to be looking out for.

Will Artemis II be sweeping around the moon by the time this programme airs, or will we be waiting a little longer for lift-off? Whatever happens with the journey back to the moon, the story is advancing, whether Artemis II flies or not. There are new scientific clues already coming from lunar samples, and robotic landers still pushing forward with fresh attempts and data. The moon’s secrets, history and untapped potential keep drawing us back, urging us to look up and explore the lunar surface once again.

Links:
The Sky at Night