Sir Patrick Stewart, 1940–2026.

This is a personal tribute.

I am a Trekkie, and Star Trek: The Next Generation was always my favourite Star Trek. Jean-Luc Picard was my captain.

So rather than make a conventional obituary, I wanted to go back to some of the stories that made me wonder — and to the questions Patrick Stewart made feel important.

The Measure of a Man asked whether an artificial intelligence could ever become a person.

Darmok asked whether translating words is the same thing as understanding another culture.

The Inner Light asked whether a remembered life can be as real and meaningful as a physical one.

Relics introduced millions of viewers to the idea of a Dyson sphere.

The Best of Both Worlds imagined human identity being absorbed into a technological network.

Chain of Command showed how power can try to make someone distrust reality itself.

And All Good Things… played with a universe in which time is far stranger than our instincts suggest.

I also look back at the four Next Generation films — Generations, First Contact, Insurrection and Nemesis — and at Patrick Stewart's final return to the character in Star Trek: Picard.

Some of the technology has dated.

The questions have not.

Artificial intelligence. Language. Memory. Brain-computer interfaces. Genetics. First contact. Time. Identity.

Patrick Stewart made intelligence charismatic, curiosity look strong, and restraint look courageous.

For some of us, Captain Jean-Luc Picard was never simply a television character.

He made us wonder.

A special edition of Time Across the Solar System, narrated by Luigi Pascal Rondanini.

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This week on Time Across the Solar System, we go to the edges — the places where one thing becomes another, and where some of the most interesting science happens.

SpaceX fires all 33 engines of a Super Heavy booster ahead of Starship Flight 15. NASA reshapes Artemis III into a major rehearsal for future Moon landings. A new ultraviolet space telescope will map a universe our eyes cannot see.

And Voyager 1 is approaching an extraordinary milestone: a distance where light itself takes an entire day to travel between Earth and the spacecraft.

We also look down from orbit at Super Typhoon Champi, investigate energetic electrons appearing inside a region of Earth's radiation belts once thought almost impossible to penetrate, and examine Teghaza 001 — a Martian meteorite more than four billion years old.

Then Hubble and Webb show us two very different views of the same nebula, ESA's Hera gets close enough to see Didymos and Dimorphos as two separate worlds, and an experiment aboard the International Space Station asks an unexpectedly important question for future Mars explorers:

What happens when your space-grown plants get sick?

Ten stories. One theme.

Boundaries are where the interesting science happens.

Presented by Tess.

Time Across the Solar System
Science, space, time and scale for curious families.

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A stellar explosion from more than 12.5 billion years ago. A comet discovered accidentally by a telescope built to study dark matter. And a white dwarf whose unusual chemistry makes it appear green.

This week on Time Across the Solar System, Tess explores ten remarkable stories connected by one idea: the universe is full of clues — we just have to learn how to read them.

We investigate JWST’s extremely distant transient AT 2026abck, a record-precision measurement of helium created during the universe’s first five minutes, Euclid’s accidental discovery of comet C/2026 S1, and Webb’s surprising detection of heavy elements around Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way.

Closer to home, two University of Hawaiʻi students use traditional Hawaiian ideas to rethink food production for future Mars crews, JAXA’s MMX mission begins its five-year journey to collect samples from Phobos, and ESA challenges researchers to help a lost lunar rover navigate using only a ground panorama and an orbital map.

We also follow the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope into final science commissioning, visit the new Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope high in Chile’s Atacama Desert, and discover why WD J1330+6435 may be the first documented green star.

Ten stories. One big idea:

The universe is full of clues.

Family-friendly astronomy, planetary science and space news with Tess.

More episodes, calculators and educational resources at tatssp.com

A galaxy cluster appears to smile at us from deep space, Vesta reaches opposition and becomes easier to spot from Earth, and astronomers detect an unusual form of methanol in interstellar space for the first time.

This week on Time Across the Solar System, Tess explores ten stories connected by one idea:

Change the viewpoint, and the story changes.

We look behind the launch pad at workforce changes supporting NASA’s Artemis programme, explore Hubble’s famous gravitationally lensed “smiley face”, meet a new small-launch startup targeting orbit in 2028, and hear what it actually feels like to work outside a spacecraft.

We also follow Vesta across the night sky, view spiral galaxy NGC 1827 edge-on with Hubble, examine the International Space Station’s roll-out solar arrays, look down on West Antarctica from orbit, explore NASA’s new “Super Intelligence” terminology, and investigate the first reported detection of fully deuterated methanol around a young star.

Ten stories. One big idea:

The universe changes depending on how you look at it.

Family-friendly astronomy, space science and planetary perspectives with Tess.

More episodes, calculators and educational resources at tatssp.com

Crew-13 has arrived at the International Space Station, Crew-12 is back on Earth, and astronomers have traced a fast radio burst whose signal travelled for more than ten billion years before reaching us.

This week on Time Across the Solar System, Tess explores ten stories showing that nothing in space runs on just one clock.

We follow Crew-13’s rapid journey to the ISS, Crew-12’s return after seven months in orbit, and South Korea’s latest multi-satellite launch. We then travel much farther out to investigate the most distant fast radio burst yet located, a possible second-generation planet born after its star died, and a magnetic switchback traced back toward the Sun by Solar Orbiter.

Mars contributes one of the strangest weather stories of the week with a morning cloud stretching roughly 1,800 kilometres, while Phobos carries the enormous Stickney Crater and continues its slow journey inward toward Mars.

We also look beneath the Moon for possible lava-tube caves that could one day shelter astronauts, and beneath Antarctic ice, where the IceCube experiment detects ghostly neutrinos from some of the most energetic places in the universe.

Ten stories. One big idea:

Nothing in space runs on just one clock.

Family-friendly astronomy, planetary science and space news with Tess.

More episodes, calculators and educational resources at tatssp.com

Could a suitcase-sized spacecraft listen to the universe before the first stars existed?

This week on Time Across the Solar System, Tess explores ten stories about one of astronomy’s most extraordinary rules: the farther into space we look, the further back in time we see.

We meet CosmoCube, a small spacecraft designed to hide behind the Moon and listen for ancient hydrogen from the cosmic dark ages. The James Webb Space Telescope reveals a spectacular gravitational-lensing “house of mirrors”, evidence of enormous planet-shattering collisions, mysterious Little Red Dots that may contain rapidly growing black holes, and early galaxies already spreading the ingredients needed for planets and life.

Closer to home, Webb explores tiny brown dwarfs in the stellar nursery IC 348, astronauts travel rapidly to the International Space Station, ESA’s JUICE spacecraft borrows momentum from Earth on its journey to Jupiter, Mars begins a new year, and SMILE starts watching the invisible magnetic shield surrounding our planet.

Ten stories. One big idea:

In space, looking farther away often means looking further back in time.

Family-friendly astronomy, planetary science and space news with Tess.

More episodes, calculators and educational resources at tatssp.com

A moon of Uranus may once have hidden an ocean more than one hundred miles deep. Astronomers have detected radio bursts coming directly from a planet sixty-three light-years away. And NASA is uncovering a much more complicated history of water on ancient Mars.This week on Time Across the Solar System, Tess explores ten stories about something astronomy does remarkably well: discovering things we cannot see directly.We investigate Ariel’s possible subsurface ocean, new techniques for tracking asteroids through their shadows, radio emissions from Beta Pictoris b, Perseverance’s evidence for complex water systems on Mars, life surviving extreme heat on Earth, and Jupiter’s unexpectedly complicated magnetic shield.We also look at Earth’s changing planetary boundaries, Hubble completing its 200,000th orbit, a newly identified giant crater on the Moon, and a white dwarf producing a shock wave that astronomers cannot yet fully explain.Ten stories. One big idea:The most important things in space are often invisible.Family-friendly astronomy, planetary science and space news with Tess.More episodes, calculators and educational resources at tatssp.com

Starship has a new launch date. Mars has turned purple. And Hubble has found a galaxy whose centre appears to be rotating in a completely different direction from the rest.

This week on Time Across the Solar System, Tess explores ten stories showing how space is becoming a place humanity must not only explore, but also schedule, monitor and manage.

We look at SpaceX’s next Starship flight, Europe’s growing launch market, tiny brown dwarfs photographed by the James Webb Space Telescope, the strange colours of Mars’ south pole, International Observe the Moon Night and brilliant Venus.

We also examine the growing problem of satellites and debris in Earth orbit, the increasing importance of orbital infrastructure, an impact crater discovered in the Canadian wilderness, and Hubble’s remarkable view of NGC 4698.

Ten stories. One big idea:

Space is not empty. It is active, changing and increasingly crowded.

Family-friendly space news, astronomy and planetary science with Tess.

More episodes, calculators and educational resources at tatssp.com