Sky Matters: Dr Niall Smith on why we may be 'all made of stars'

Alexa, play Cosmic Girl by Jamiroquai. We were forged from stardust

The Hubble Space Telescope showed us that the universe is expanding at a rapid rate

I feel fortunate to have witnessed many great astronomical events and discoveries in my lifetime. My earliest memories come from 1969, the era of Apollo and the first landing of a person on another celestial body. That momentous event was followed in 1971 by the first long-duration human occupation of space when the Soviet Union launched the Salyut-1 space station. In 1977, NASA’s two Voyager spacecraft were launched on their epic journeys to the outer solar system, giving us close-up views of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune that are simply impossible to capture from the ground. Far from revealing a group of similar planetary systems, the images revealed tens of new moons, massive geysers on objects thought to be geologically dead, incredible displays of lightning that dwarf our experiences on Earth, and super-high-speed winds like nothing ever witnessed on our home planet.

Around the same time, the Viking 1 lander on Mars was sending back photos from its surface with incredible clarity, showing rocks that have lain undisturbed for billions of years and tantalizingly provided evidence for life — evidence which was subsequently overturned, but which for a brief period caught the global imagination and the real prospect of not being alone.