Solar System: release date, trailer, planets, interview with Brian Cox and everything we know

Solar System sees Professor Brian Cox take viewers on five epic journeys through our solar system to explore some of the discoveries made by recent space missions.

The five part series for BBC2 will explore a volcano the size of Everest erupting on Venus, ice crystals falling on Mars and red frost on the mountains of Pluto.

Brian will also be finding out about NASA's attempt to bring back a pristine sample from an ancient asteroid that could tell us about the solar system's origin.

Here we tell you everything you need to know about the new series and speak to Brian to find out more.

Solar System release date

Solar System begins on Monday, October 7, 2024 on BBC One and will be available as a box set on BBC iPlayer.

Solar System — how many episodes is the series and what content is covered?

Solar System is five episodes.

The first episode is called Volcano Worlds. Professor Brian Cox travels to Iceland where he uses the Icelandic geology to explain the volcanic planets of the solar system like Venus, which has more than 85,000 volcanoes.

"Filming in Iceland was challenging because of the weather conditions", says Brian. "The only way we could get into one of the big volcano chains was by helicopter. We had to wait for four days before it was clear enough."

Later episodes see him in Spain, Utah and Alaska where he explains and demonstrates some of the fascinating phenomena happening in space and the underlying physics and geology.

What new discoveries can we expect?

Brian says, "We are living through a golden age of space exploration. Right now there are spacecraft in orbit around or on the surface of five of the eight planets in our solar system. As new data cascades in we are building an ever more accurate and detailed picture."

How does this series compare to previous ones about the Solar System?

Brian says, "Previous series about the solar system have tended to only focus on the planets and their moons but we wanted to tell the story of the smaller and important things that are out there too: the asteroids, the Kuiper Belt objects, the Oort Cloud. In episode two for example we explore the asteroid that hit someone’s driveway in Winchcombe in the Cotswolds during lockdown 2021."

Is the series Solar System accessible to younger viewers?

"Yes. You’ll see me doing experiments where we keep the language simple and make things very visual", says Brian. "I often get teachers I meet telling me that they’ve used clips from my past series to help explain things to their pupils which is lovely to hear. Science is so important because everything we do in modern life rests on some scientific discovery of the past."

Solar System episodes

Subsequent episodes see him in Spain, Utah and Alaska. Brian says "The episode we shot in Alaska was explaining how ice works in the solar system. You might think ice sounds dull but actually ice is tremendously complicated. For example, on Pluto you’ve got these glaciers flowing down valleys but it’s not water ice, it’s nitrogen ice. We think there is also ice in the clouds of Uranus which conducts electricity and appears to be linked to its aurora."

Which was your favourite episode to make in this series of Solar System?

"I loved the one we shot in Alaska. I got the opportunity to go to the mountain peak Denali, which is one of the world's great locations, but it's very difficult to get to. We were flying in this aircraft which is built to land on a glacier and that was fun. I love flying and we went in an Otter aircraft from the 1950s that has been hugely modified to fly in that environment."

You say in the show that we are making new discoveries about space each day. What can you tell us?

"Yes, absolutely. Mars is a good example. I remember the Viking probe landed on Mars in the 70s and there was tremendous disappointment because they were looking for life and it felt like it was arid and not interesting. As a result, exploration stopped for a while and the idea that there could be life on Mars went away but then it came back again because we're getting more and more evidence that there might be subsurface water and so it's becoming extremely exciting and interesting again."

Which planet fascinates you most?

"Venus. It’s always been problematic for us in terms of television because it’s covered in clouds so there are very few images. But Venus is like a twin planet to Earth because it’s in roughly the same place in the solar system and yet it’s gone down a very different path because it lost all its water about a billion years ago."

What do you hope viewers take away from this new series?

"The Solar System is basically like a giant chemistry set and this series is almost like a love letter to chemistry, you're seeing how everything interacts with everything else.  The question I often get asked is 'Why do we do space exploration?' And there are lots of answers for that, but one of them is that, if we want to understand why Earth is the way it is and how it works at a very basic level you can't answer that without looking at the other planets and the other little places in our solar system."

Is there a trailer for Solar System?

Yes, you can get a taste of what to expect from the clip below...

Solar System airs from Monday, October 7, at 9pm on BBC2 and is available as a box set on BBC iPlayer.