Plot Synopsis

Hosted by former NASA Astronaut Mike Massimino, a veteran of two missions to the Hubble Space Telescope and four space walks, THE PLANETS is a one-hour documentary series that explores Earth's closest neighbors in the solar system, telling the story of the discovery and exploration of the planets and revealing their deepest secrets. In the series opener, "Jupiter: King of the Planets," Massimino leads a journey to Jupiter, the biggest and most extreme planet in our Solar System. Using new discoveries and the latest science, he investigates Jupiter's mysteries -- and if it is actually the Sun's secret twin.

This series returned for its second season on Tuesday, March 20, 2018 at 10pm ET/PT on Science Channel with a new title: THE PLANETS AND BEYOND. In each of the eight episodes in Season 2, Mike Massimino takes an in-depth look at everything from Neptune & Uranus, to alien planets and the Sun, providing a perspective on the cosmos that only an elite few can match. The season opener, "Birth of Earth," s the incredible story of the origins of our world, which reveals that planets like Earth in other parts of the universe must be abundant. Our planet was formed by a series of cataclysms, from the most powerful blast in the universe to a planetary collision that could have destroyed it. Yet without these events, Earth would not exist, nor would we. Could the same extraordinary chain of events have created other earth-like planets elsewhere in the universe, which are inhabited by creatures like us? Also explored this season are Uranus, Neptune and Mercury as well as alien planets, which scientists have for the last twenty years been discovering at an amazing rate. The Milky Way, which is our home galaxy that is made up of 200 billion stars, one of which is the Sun, will also be looked at.
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On Tuesday, April 17, 2018 at 10pm ET/PT, Science Channel premiered "Ice Giants: The Frozen Aliens," a new episode of THE PLANETS AND BEYOND. Astronaut Mike Massimino journeys to Uranus and Neptune, the farthest planets from the Sun and the home to some of the solar system's strangest mysteries.