Mars is the focus of current space exploration but how far back does this interest go? Dr Joshua Nall tells Seb Falk about the Mars globe held at the Whipple Science Museum in Cambridge. Hannah Smithson explains her research into the way we see colour and explains the different perceptions of that blue/black/gold/white dress. Timothy Peacock has been studying the fears about Skylab falling to earth, looking at government files and the media reporting of the 1979 re-entry and distintegration of the first United States space station.

Dr Joshua Nall is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker and the Curator of Modern Sciences at the Whipple Museum of the History of Science in Cambridge. His book News from Mars: Mass Media and the Forging of a New Astronomy, 1860–1910 was awarded the Philip Pauly Prize by the History of Science society.

Seb Falk is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and Arts and Humanities Research Council to put research on the radio. He is the author of the book The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science. You can hear more from him in a Free Thinking episode called Ancient Wisdom and Remote Living https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000q3by and his short feature for BBC Radio 3 about why we shouldn't compare Covid to the Black Death https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000nkzr

You can find a playlist exploring New Research on the Free Thinking website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90

This episode was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod