2022 marks the fiftieth year since an astronaut last stepped on the moon's surface. We look back at the legacy of the Apollo programme and forward to the future of lunar exploration. Maggie and Chris visit the Science Museum in London, where Maggie discovers from space curator Doug Millard that one of the museum's star attractions – Apollo 10's command module – nearly did not make it back to Earth.

Chris discovers that Nasa's latest assault on the moon, the ‘Artemis' programme, plans to set up an orbiting moon station and a shuttle from it to a permanent base on the moon's surface, and learns from Nasa's Dana Hurley that much of the technology needed for such a mission has yet to be invented. Nonetheless, the first dry run for the SLS rocket and the Orion command capsule and moon landing system will go ahead without a crew and is planned later this year. On that first mission to orbit the moon, 13 tiny ‘cubesats' will be released into the moon's orbit to discover more about the lunar surface in anticipation of greater future human activity on the moon. These low-cost satellites are providing the next generation of space scientists and engineers an opportunity to work on spacecraft for the first time.

Maggie talks to Craig Hardgrove, an associate professor from Arizona State University, who leads a relatively inexperienced team in building LunaH-Map. The pint-sized craft will scan the lunar surface for evidence of hydrogen, and therefore water, which will be enormously useful for future missions and moon bases to provide sustenance and fuel – once the technology is in place to deliver it.

Pete Lawrence is on hand for tips on how best to observe the moon from Earth during the upcoming lunar eclipse on the 16 May, and Chris learns from Professor Sara Russell of the Natural History Museum that the Apollo missions allowed science to identify moon asteroids here on Earth, and that future missions retrieving more moon rock might tell us even more about how the Earth formed and how life emerged.

The British weather is often the enemy of stargazers up and down the country. A forecast of a couple of hours of cloud cover will disappoint even the most determined of amateur astronomers. So, this month, the Sky at Night becomes the ‘Sky at Day' to provide an alternative range of spectacles to observe and activities to partake in, ideal when the nights are short, and the stars are hiding behind the clouds.

The most obvious spectacle to observe is of course our own star, the sun. A moment is needed to appreciate that whilst amateurs and scientists alike spend lifetimes and whole careers searching after distant stars in the night sky, we have a star on our celestial doorstep that we can actually send a space probe to. In 2018, that is exactly what Nasa did. The idea for the Parker Solar Probe was conceived in 1958, but it took 60 years to develop the technology to make it possible, namely, working out how to prevent it from melting.

Justin Kasper, principal investigator for the Sweap instrument (Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons investigation), spoke to Chris about how the probe entered the sun's atmosphere and made incredible discoveries about its structure. It revealed that the boundary where solar material anchored to the sun first escapes and becomes the solar wind is not a smooth ball but has spikes and valleys that wrinkle the ‘Alfvén critical surface'. Previously, the coronal streamers that cause this wrinkling had been observed from a distance but never measured directly until Sweap came along. Its discoveries are altering what scientists know about the way in which the sun's atmosphere transforms into the solar wind.

Back on earth, Dr Hannah Wakeford shows us how observing the sun as it rises and sets in the sky can tell us a huge amount about the composition of our atmosphere and the weather on the horizon. The adage ‘Red sky at night, shepherd's delight. Red sky in the morning, shepherd's warning' is dismissed as many as an old wives' tale. However, due to our unique position in the mid-latitudes, it turns out that this saying may be more accurate than many think. Hannah also explores, as light travels from the sun to our eye, how different wavelengths are absorbed and scattered by the atmosphere, and the light that completes the journey to our eye or our telescope can reveal the combination of gases that make up the atmosphere. Hannah explains how this process has helped scientists to work out the composition of the atmosphere of other planets in our solar system and even exoplanets orbiting distant stars.

Exploring during the day can sometimes unlock a whole new scientific field. Guest presenter George Dransfield spoke to urban micrometeorite hunter Jon Larsen about how he accidentally discovered a micrometeorite on his garden table whilst eating strawberries on a fine summer's day, and how, ever since, he has been pioneering a method for amateurs across the globe to discover pieces of stardust in their own back garden. George tries to find some micrometeorites of her own, and in the process, learns about the huge spectrum of micrometeorites that Jon, along with his partner Jan Braly Kihle, has found and photographed in astounding detail.

As well as hunting meteorites and watching the sunset, there is also stargazing to be done during the day. Amateur astronomer and outreach hero Simon Holbeche from Bath spends every sunny weekend showing members of the public the sun in a whole new light. Using different specialist telescopes and heavy solar filters, Simon is able to show passers-by the incredible sunspots on the solar surface and the exploding prominences in the sun's atmosphere. His enduring hope is that those passers-by might become hooked by what they've seen, and one day come back to see the sky at night.