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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Start the Week: Space – the human story

Space – the human story

BBC Radio 4 - Start the Week, Space – the human story

Kirsty Wark with astronaut Tim Peake, writer Samantha Harvey and physicist Roberto Trotta.

The astronaut Tim Peake, novelist Samantha Harvey and cosmologist Roberto Trotta explore our relations with the cosmos, with Kirsty Wark.

Tim Peake was the first British astronaut to visit the International Space Station, and is one of only 628 people in human history to have left the Earth’s atmosphere. In Space he tells the human story of space exploration – from launch to landing. 

In Samantha Harvey’s latest novel Orbital six astronauts on a space station rotate above the Earth. While their waking lives are spent conducting scientific experiments and maintaining the spacecraft, their attention is constantly drawn back to the Earth – its beauty as they circle it, and the fragility of the human life on it. 

The cosmologist Roberto Trotta stands on firm ground and gazes skyward. In Starborn he wonders how different our world would be if our ancestors had looked up and there were no stars. From navigation to time, gravity to the wonder of the universe, the cosmos has profoundly shaped our understanding of the world.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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