Sun Probe

"Sun Probe" is an episode of Thunderbirds, a British Supermarionation television series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and filmed by their production company AP Films (APF) for ITC Entertainment. Written by Alan Fennell and directed by David Lane, it was first broadcast on 9 December 1965 on ATV Midlands as the 11th episode of Series One. It is the fourth episode in the official running order. Set in the 2060s, the series follows the exploits of International Rescue, an organisation that uses technologically advanced rescue vehicles to save human life. The main characters are ex-astronaut Jeff Tracy, founder of International Rescue, and his five adult sons, who pilot the organisation's main vehicles: the Thunderbird machines. In "Sun Probe", Thunderbirds 2 and 3 are launched to save a crew of astronauts whose spacecraft is locked on a collision course with the Sun. Plot At Cape Kennedy in Florida, Colonel Benson oversees the launch of Sun Probe, a three-man spacecraft designed to extract matter from the Sun. Sun Probe lifts off safely and its journey to the Sun passes without incident. A week later, as Sun Probe nears its target, International Rescue watch live TV coverage of the mission from Tracy Island. Brains (voiced by David Graham) is absent from the proceedings as he is busy working on his latest invention, an artificially-intelligent humanoid robot called Braman. In space, solarnauts Harris, Asher and Camp fire a smaller probe through a solar prominence and succeed in capturing fragments of matter. However, by the time the probe returns to the main spacecraft, the intensifying radiation has caused Sun Probes retro-rockets to fail, locking it on a collision course with the Sun.