All Aboard the Sir David Attenborough

Costing the Earth

The public wanted to name her Boaty McBoatface, but in the end she got a slightly more stately name. The UK's newest polar research vessel, the RRS Sir David Attenborough, has just set out on her maiden voyage to Antarctica, where she'll enable scientists to research climate change and its impacts on the polar regions.

Following a hundred years of polar exploration, this ship will write the next chapter in UK polar science.

In this episode, ocean physicist Helen Czerski gets aboard to poke around the new ship, and meets the crew members and scientists who will be taking her to the ends of the earth in search of the answers to some of the most pressing questions of our time. She finds out how the ship has been designed specially to encourage collaboration and bring together scientists from different fields. And she tries out the bunks and learns what life at sea will be like.

Find out why krill can fight climate change, how you cook at sea in a storm and what the massive hole in the middle of the ship is for!

Producer: Heather Simons