NASA's Unexplained Files

Nasa's mission is to explore the unknown.

What we know about the universe

is a tiny fraction of what's actually out there.

In the search for answers,

it launches its scientists into space,

its craft beyond the limits of the solar system.

We have no idea what's out there.

There might be dangers lurking in the darkness.

We run across more mysteries than discoveries.

We don't know what it's gonna throw at us next.

A deadly gas leak on board the I.S.S...

It could be the smell of death.

Strange streaks on the surface of Mars

that hint at something incredible...

there might be life on Mars,

and we're just looking in the wrong place.

...And is someone seeding chemtrails

into our atmosphere?

Some people believe

that there's a sinister plot going on

that they're actually spraying chemicals in the sky.

These are Nasa's unexplained files.

Captions paid for by Discovery Communications

A Soviet spacecraft lands on the Moon.

The space race is on.

And the Moon is the next big prize.

It sends back pictures

as proof of its incredible achievement.

These are the first pictures from the surface of the Moon.

But the Russians are about to get scooped.

This would be like

Neil Armstrong's first words from the Moon

being broadcast over Radio Moscow.

The United States and Russia

are locked in a global struggle for hearts and minds.

While the World worries about the growing nuclear threat,

propaganda is an increasingly potent weapon.

And nothing better captures the World's attention

than success in space.

By this point in the mid-1960s,

the space race is essentially a tie.

Both sides have had great achievements.

But each side is still looking for that one more step

that's going to give them the edge.

The space race is on.

And the Moon is the next big prize.

We're racing against the Soviets.

Who's gonna demonstrate

that they can get there first and actually can land?

In january 1966,

the Russians launch an unmanned spacecraft

called Luna 9.

U.S. Intelligence is desperate to discover its mission.

The Soviets only release

information about their space program

that's to their advantage.

They only tell us what they want us to know.

The U.S. activates a global network of astronomers

to track the small spacecraft.

The central intelligence agency

is utilizing radio telescopes from all over the World

to essentially eavesdrop on the Soviet space program.

Basically, a lot of the World's top astronomers

are acting as spies for the C.I.A.

They're kind of outsourcing it to their allies

including to the folks at Jodrell Bank in the U.K.

Who run the largest radio telescope in the World.

The Americans' worst fears are confirmed

when a listening station in Eritrea

captures Luna 9's telemetry data.

It's on course to touch down on the Moon.

Nichols; this is going to be a big deal for any space program

because for the first time,

a man-made object is going to be able

to engage in a controlled descent

and actually land on the surface of the Moon

Instead of crashing on it.

Probes, like the American Ranger program,

have previously reached the Moon,

but only by crashing into it.

It's totally different

to soft land and then transmit pictures

actively from the surface of the Moon.

If the Russians can prove

that they have soft-landed on the Moon,

it would be the biggest propaganda victory

since yuri gagarin became the first man in space.

This is how the Soviets are gonna get back on top,

not just in the space race, but in the Cold War itself.

In the U.K.,

Jodrell Banks astronomers listen intently

to the stream of data coming from Luna 9.

But as it hurdles towards the Moon,

suddenly, the stream vanishes.

The signal from Luna 9 goes dead.

What's happened? Has it crashed?

The astronomers-turned-spies hold tight.

After four minutes of silence, there is still no signal.

Soviet Luna probes don't have a great record.

Some of them missed the Moon entirely.

So when Luna 9 goes silent,

it's a good assumption that it may have crashed.

Actually, it's just taking a pause

to start sending a different signal.

The signal comes back.

Luna 9 is alive.

But the transmission mode has shifted.

As an alien burst of sound

echoes around the Jodrell Bank Observatory,

the team of astronomers frantically try

to decipher the unfamiliar transmission.

The probe must be sending

some kind of message back to Earth.

But the question is, what is it?

One of the astronomers recognizes the unusual signal.

the tiny spacecraft is sending a fax.

A british scientist spying for the C.I.A.

is listening to a Soviet probe

sending a fax signal from the Moon.

This is long before the digital revolution.

Fax machines are extremely rare.

The scientists get on the phone

searching for a fax machine they can use

to decipher the signal.

One of them contacts a popular british newspaper

called the daily express.

They have a fax.

Sensing a scoop,

the paper rushes it over to the observatory.

And Britain's most sophisticated telescope

plugs into a fax machine.

The seconds tick by

as astronomers and journalists wait to see

what data the Soviet craft is sending back.

As the paper crawls through the machine,

a weird, unEarthly shape begins to take form.

The signal isn't carrying a message.

It's carrying pictures.

And not just any pictures,

these are the first pictures from the surface of the Moon.

Luna 9 has done it.

For the first time in history,

a spacecraft has survived a landing on another World

and is sending back the proof,

and it's the Soviets who have done it.

This is an enormous milestone in space exploration.

The Soviets are hoping to reap a propaganda coup

from their technological triumph.

But one thing stands in their way.

Because of the curvature in the rotation of the Earth,

the signal from the Moon is hitting Britain first

before it gets to the Soviet Union.

They can intercept the Soviet data

before the Kremlin gets it.

The pure dumb luck of geography

has put the british in place

to steal the glory of the greatest achievement

in the space race so far.

Now it's a race against time

to prepare the pictures for publication

before the signal gets to the Soviets.

These are going to be

the most important pictures in the Soviet space program

since the launch of their first person into space.

within hours, the first images

from the surface of the Moon are published,

not in Soviet papers, but in british journals.

The Soviets got scooped on their own historic Moon images.

The daily express

gets the biggest scoop in space news history.

Could you imagine...

...having the one thing

you've been working on for so long,

to get the first image of the Moon on the surface,

and somebody publishes it first?

I would be mad as hell.

This had to have been

a huge humiliation for the Soviets.

This would be like the Americans

hearing neil armstrong's first words from the Moon

being broadcast over Radio Moscow.

Up next, modern planetary scientists

are sure of one thing about Mars...

We know that you can't have standing water on Mars.

Mars is a really dry place.

It is a desert in the extreme, extreme ways.

But exciting new evidence

suggests liquid water

is flowing on the surface of the red planet.

Where there's liquid water, at least on Earth,

there's always life.

For centuries,

we have speculated about life on Mars and feared it.

We always think of life on Mars as little green men.

But more than likely, if there is life,

it may be very different

than what we find back here on our own planet Earth.

Now a Nasa probe over the red planet

produces new evidence

showing this could be a real possibility.