Brian Cox: Seven Days On Mars

BBC2, 9pm

They are the questions that have exercised almost anyone who’s ever looked up to the night sky: are we alone – and could there once have been life on Mars? As Professor Brian Cox (right) reports in this marvellous feature-length documentary, we may be on the verge of getting the answers, thanks to the latest Nasa mission to the red planet and its cutting-edge technology.

Not only is the Perseverance rover better equipped than any previous vehicle sent there, there’s also the Ingenuity helicopter, the first aircraft ever sent to another planet.

Over a week, Cox enjoys privileged access to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) mission control, as Perseverance searches out samples across a crater that would have been filled with water billions of years ago – providing conditions very similar to those in which life first arose on Earth. )))))