This engaging and inventive project offers the chance to view science as art, and art as science. What's up in the Universe? has as its central theme and goal a desire to help viewers understand the nature of the universe, and to recognize that we achieved this knowledge through a fascinating relationship between creativity and the hard work of scientific research. Among all sciences, astronomy has the greatest dependence on daring leaps of imagination and on the ongoing development of ever better technology.

What's up in the Universe? explores our own planet's relationship and similarities with the other planets in our solar system and ponders in a truly contemporary matrix the age old questions, "Are we alone? Is there life elsewhere in the universe?" Questions made more profound with the recent discovery of extra-solar planets orbiting sun-like starts and the new discoveries being transmitted daily from sources from beyond our own galaxy.

In the first segment, viewers travel with Nainoa Thompson, a native Hawaiian who uses a blend of ancient and modern techniques of navigation to guide his twin-hulled canoe to the island of Rapa Nui (Easter Island). His ambitious and dangerous venture parallels current journeys beyond Earth, and gives an overwhelming sense of adventure and thrill involved in exploration.

Previously available through NETA.