For as long as our records go back,
humans have been looking to the stars.
We've used them to navigate, to track weather and tides,
and to tell the stories of who we are and where we come from.
Here in East Arnhem land,
that connection to the night sky has been passed down for generations.
And now it's being carried into the future -
propelled by rocket fuel.
We're here in Australia!
And we're going to launch some rockets.
We're following two NASA rocket missions as they try to understand
how stars make the planets around them suitable for life.
I'm Miles Hatfield,
and in this episode we're talking about living with the stars.
The rocket range may be new, but for the people of East Arnhem land,
an interest in the night sky is about as far from new as you can get.
This is the traditional home of the Yolngu people,
one of the oldest cultures on earth.
As owners of the land and partners in establishing the new Arnhem Space Center,
they're enriching cutting-edge space research with thousands
of years of tradition connecting them to the night sky
As the NASA crew arrived in Australia,
we met Djawa Yunupingu, elder in the Gumatj clan.
One of the thirteen clans comprising the Yolngu nation.
Djawa is also chairman of the Gumatj Corporation,
which represents the interests
of the Gumatj people in political and economic affairs.
He invited us back to Gumatj Corporation headquarters, where we spoke with him and
Klaus Helms to learn more about his clan and their long history with the stars.
We talk about the stars
and how
important they are to the Yolngu people, culturally.
You know, instead of compasses
we followed the stars
to get to where we wanted to get to.
One of the stories Djawa told us was about a prominent cluster of stars
known to Westerners as the Pleiades.
Cultures all over the world have stories about the Pleiades,
which are often portrayed as siblings.
The Gumatj story tells of seven sisters
who rowed across the sky in a large canoe.
The Gumatj refer to them as Djulpan, the Yolngu word for canoe.
I think this is kind of the Milky Way
where the stars are here.
And the seven sisters,
we sing that in our songlines -
of the Djulpan.
Them.
This is the canoe. The Djulpan.
According to the story we were told, the seven sisters fish and gather food
until they reach their home beyond the horizon where they cook it.
The Yolngu say they can sometimes see the smoke from their fires
from beyond the horizon.
In the stories they
look down, and you know, look over
the country with us.
The people that they
were once, you know.
Learning these stories was a critical part of Djawa’s upbringing and a tradition
he hopes to uphold for the next generation.
Whether it's from a painting like this,
or it’s stories that were handed down
from generation, you know.
Because that’s how it happened back in the days.
Everything was passed on.
As the traditional landowners,
the Gumatj Corporation are leasing the land to Equatorial Launch Australia
and have been working with them and NASA to make the launch range a reality.
My clan, Gumatj, they were well behind this.
We were looking at the future, kind of a perspective from, from us.
You know, like the stars play a very important role in our survival.
The Gumatj board selected Klaus Helms to join them in 2011,
and for the past few years he's been deeply involved in the project.
We had many, many, many meetings with NASA people
to see if it was even possible.
When Scott first got here, we were walking through the bush with a compass,
through all those trees, and he was trying to visualize could it be done?
And you know, we just had to assure him that yeah we can do it.
We'll do it. And you know, the next time he came it was all cleared.
So, you know, that was a sort of like a breather for him.
Thank God, you know, we got a site.
In a few short days, that site will be put to its first test
as propels a rocket into the night sky for an even clearer view of the stars.
But there's one star you can never see at night.
I'll give you a hint.
Today it continues to grow our food, light our way, and keep us warm.
[crunching sound]
That's not food.
[spitting sound]
That's right! Our sun.
Next time, how our sun helps us understand habitable worlds
elsewhere in the universe and how it can mislead us.