This is a podcast from BBC Studios.

BBC Studios.

A commercial subsidiary of the BBC.

I've always been interested in space since I was very young.

I remember when I was about six, we got my dad a telescope for his birthday, and I definitely used it more than him.

Whenever it was clear and we'd go outside the garden and lie on the floor

and look up at the stars, he'd show me all the constellations and things like that.

Orion and a round's belt. We did the Big Dipper, the Big Bear. That was my favourite, I think. Passive hair. The Big Dipper and the Little Dipper come as a pair. Beetlejuice. I just liked that. It was like a little family in the sky. Welcome to the BBC Earth podcast. I'm Emily Knight and this is the final episode of this series,

a series that's told stories about some of the amazing animals that live among us

and explore the technology that helps us get close to them.

We've looked down on the wonder of our planet from above

and met the people who are working hard to take better care of it.

And now for our final journey, we're looking beyond Earth, out through our thinning atmosphere

to the stars and the depths of space.

As I got older, I started wanting to learn about what was beyond that.

I knew from a young age that my grandparents' generation had put men on the moon,

and my parents' generation had built the ISS,

and I always wondered what it would be that I would do.

Not many of us have been to space.

From a planet of 7.5 billion, less than 600 of us have made it

beyond the bounds of our atmosphere. Of them, around a third, have been aboard the ISS, the

International Space Station. It's a satellite, a permanently orbiting research platform,

...