Take a Voyage of Discovery from Home

Our journey of discovery starts here, on the bridge of the Research Vessel Sonne. We're moored near the German Marine Museum, on the coast of the North Sea, but the Sonne ready to set sail to the most remote parts of the ocean, on voyages of deep sea exploration.

From this deck, underwater drones and crewed submersibles are launched into the depths, where they may find thermal vents, rare minerals, wrecked ships, or lifeforms unknown to science. Despite our long history of ocean exploration, we know less about the seafloor than the Moon.

Scientific discovery has taken humans from the depths of the oceans to the ends of the Earth, and today, it takes us where no person can go - to the quantum level. To do so, scientists have constructed enormous particle colliders, such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

The enormous underground super-chilled magnetic circuit speeds up a particles until they reach a fraction of the speed of light, before smashing them together, and recording the results. It is quite simply the largest scientific experiment ever conducted.

There's only so much we can learn about Earth by remaining on it, for further discoveries, we need to leave the planet. At the museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, you'll find a treasure trove of spacecraft, including the Space Shuttle Discovery.

This shuttle has flown into space more times than any other spacecraft, it's orbited the earth 5,830 times, and it's travelled 238,539,663 kilometres. It's also famous for having launched the Hubble Space Telescope. Discovery really does live up to it's name.

How about actually taking a trip into space? In 2017, Google Street View blasted into orbit and boarded the International Space Station to capture what life in low orbit looks like in 3D. Right now, we're in the cupola, which offers the astronauts an unbelievable view of Earth.

Thanks for joining us on this tour of discovery. We'll leave you here, near the external airlock, where the EVA spacesuits are stored. While you're up here, why not take a look around the rest of the station? See if you can find the SpaceX Cargo Dragon currently docked.