Mars anchors much of this debut season, examined as the planet in our solar system most like Earth despite its otherworldly features, including the largest volcano yet found in the solar system. Episodes track how orbiters and rovers have mapped its surface, finding lunar-like impact craters alongside valleys, deserts, and polar ice caps, and how NASA missions have detected frozen water just beneath the rust-colored soil, reopening the question of whether the planet ever supported life. Computer graphics reconstruct what a human outpost on Mars might look like and speculate on life forms that could evolve under an alien atmosphere. Beyond Mars, the season widens its lens to space telescopes recording the violent birth of stars and NASA probes examining the composition of comets, tracing fifty years of human efforts to study the cosmos. The series moves from planetary geology to stellar formation and back, treating each discovery as part of a longer record of what exploration has actually found rather than what it promises to find.