MAN: We copy you down, "Eagle."
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NARRATOR: Flying through space at the speed of light
is an image familiar to us from science fiction.
It is also the inspiration for many astronomers today.
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Through astronomy, we try and understand
what our place in the universe is.
My job is to expand humankind's knowledge
about the universe.
My passion for astronomy comes from my wondering about
how the universe works.
So when I was a kid, I used to watch a lot of science fiction
and read a lot of science fiction.
I really loved "Star Trek."
In "Star Trek" they would fly around to another system,
and they would always be teaming with aliens.
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But if you look around our own solar system,
it's sort of one intense landscape after the next.
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Places that look completely uninhabitable, like Mercury,
which is a thousand degrees, or Venus, which rains acid,
or Mars, which has global dust storms,
or Jupiter, which doesn't even have a surface,
and so I figured there has to be some middle ground
in between these two; how does the actual universe work?
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NARRATOR: The connection between sci-fi fantasy
and the world of astronomy is closer than we think.
JOEL: I really was driven to understand,
how much of what we see on television
and what people imagine is real?
JASON: It doesn't have to be related to
finding life on another world.
It could be related to
understanding how our Sun works,
or understanding how planets form,
when the first galaxies turned on in the universe.
I mean, these are just questions that we would like
to know to expand our knowledge of the universe.
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NARRATOR: Discovering the real science behind the adventures
of science fiction is a part of the amazing journey
in becoming an astronomer.
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