Christopher Riley (born 1967) is a British writer, broadcaster and film maker specialising in the history of science. He has a PhD from Imperial College, University of London where he pioneered the use of digital elevation models in the study of mountain range geomorphology and evolution. He makes frequent appearances on British television and radio, broadcasting mainly on space flight, astronomy and planetary science and was visiting professor of science and media at the University of Lincoln between 2011 and 2021.
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Education
Riley went to school in Cambridge, where he grew up. He studied geology at the University of Leicester for his first degree and completed his PhD at Imperial College, University of London in the mid-1990s.
Career
Riley is a veteran of two NASA astrobiology missions (Leonid MAC) from 1998 and 1999 – reporting on their progress for BBC News. He co-presented the BBC's live coverage of the 1999, 2001 and 2015 solar eclipses.
He wrote and presented the BBC TWO astronomy magazine show Final Frontier, BBC TWO's live All Night Star Party – both co-productions with the Open University and the BBC FOUR cosmology series Journeys in Time and Space.
In 2006 he wrote and presented BBC Radio 4's cosmology series The Cosmic Hunters. Other documentaries he's written and presented for BBC Radio 4 include Save the Moon (2014) and For All Mankind (2012).
Behind the camera he has written and directed more than 50 films for the BBC's classic science magazine show Tomorrow's World and was a producer and director on series six of Rough Science.
In 2004 he produced the BBC's two-part drama documentary Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets. He was the science consultant on the BBC's remakes of their science fiction cult classics A for Andromeda (2006) and The Quatermass Experiment (2005). He directed and produced on the feature documentary film In the Shadow of the Moon, which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the World Cinema Audience Documentary Award. The film was released in the US and Europe during the autumn of 2007.
Riley directed on the spinoff six-part series Moon Machines for the Discovery Channel in 2008, which celebrated the 400,000 engineers who'd made the Moonshots possible. The series aired in the US and the UK in June that year.
During the making of In the Shadow of the Moon, Riley rediscovered the only surviving 35mm print of the complete version of NASA's original Apollo 11 documentary film Moonwalk One which had been stored under the film's director Theo Kamecke's desk since it was made. With NASA's blessing, the pair worked to restore and remaster the feature film and re-released it in time for the 40th anniversary of the flight of Apollo 11 in July 2009.
Solar Eclipse Chasing
Riley is a veteran of six total eclipses of the Sun. He saw his first one from Alderney, one of the UK's Channel Islands, where he co-presented the BBC's coverage of the event in 1999. Following that broadcast, he went on to join the BBC's presenting teams in Zambia in 2001 and the Faroe Islands in 2015. He has also seen total solar eclipses in the US; one from Oregon in 2017 and another from Cleveland in 2024, and from Northern Spain in 2026.
Awards and honours
In 2005 Riley was given a Sir Arthur Clarke Award for his work producing the BBC's Space Odyssey series. The same year he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society for his endeavours in communicating astronomy to the public. His films and TV series on the history of science have won a nomination from the Royal Television Society and the World Cinema Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival 2007. He received a second Sir Arthur Clarke Award in 2008 for In the Shadow of the Moon. His 2012 documentary Voyager – to the final frontier was nominated for a British Science Writer's award, and his 2014 film The Girl who talked to Dolphins, was nominated for BAFTA, RTS and Grierson awards. His 2015 film for National Geographic, Hubble's Comsic Journey, was nominated for an Emmy.
His 2019 book, Where once we stood, a collaboration with artist Martin Impey, was nominated for a CILIP Kate Greenaway medal in 2020.
Riley's 2021 film for National Geographic - Battle for the Black Swan, won the gold medal for History and Society at the New York Festivals TV & Film Awards in 2022, and was nominated for a BAFTA the same year. His 2023 film for National Geographic - The Twenty Million Dollar Time Bomb won him a second documentary gold medal in the History and Society at the New York Festivals TV & Film Awards and was nominated for the 2024 Maritime Media Awards.
Film and television
He has directed, produced, science consulted or hosted on the following films and TV series (incomplete):
2025: Once Upon a Time in Space, BBC
2023: The $20m Time Bomb, National Geographic, Disney+
2022: Narcos, National Geographic, Disney+
2021: The Wonderful: Stories from the Space Station, Universal Pictures
2021: One Cup, a Thousand Stories, BBC Studios, Migu
2021: Battle for the Black Swan, National Geographic, Disney+
2020: Future Fantastic; China's Science Revolution, CIPG, Discovery Channel
2019: Back to the Moon, PBS NOVA
2019: Revolutions/Breakthrough, BBC, PBS
2019: Rise of the Rockets, PBS NOVA
2018: Eric Whitacre's Deep Field, iTunes, YouTube
2018: One Strange Rock, National Geographic Channel
2016: Survival in the Skies, Smithsonian Channel
2015: The Fear of 13, BBC Storyville, NetFlix
2015: End of the World Night, TwoFour, Channel 4
2015: Hubble's Cosmic Journey, Bigger Bang, National Geographic Channel
Video installations and art commissions
In 2009, to coincide with the 40th Anniversary of the flight of Apollo 11, Riley collaborated with the London Science Museum on a novel video installation called "Apollo Raw and Uncut" which projected all 23 hours of NASA's 16mm Apollo flight film, shot on Apollo missions AS-501 (Apollo 4) to AS-512 (Apollo 17). Much of this footage, including an almost 8-minute sequence documenting a long drive across the rugged Descartes Highlands had never been screened in its entirety in public before. The aim of the installation was to present the story of Apollo in as unedited and unfiltered form as possible. The work was screened again in Montreal, Quebec, in November 2009, as part of an exhibition at the Canadian Centre for Architecture called 'Intermission: Films from a Heroic Future', which Riley also helped to curate, and a third time in 2013 at Lincoln's Digital Culture Festival Frequency.
Continuing the presentation of overlooked space film archives in public gallery spaces Chris collaborated with the London-based creative science agency super/collider on his 2011 show Cone Crater – a 40th anniversary celebration of Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell's exploration of the Frau Mauro lunar highlands, which played at The Book Club, London as part of the Apollo's End project.
In 2015, ahead of the 40th anniversary of the Voyager spacecraft's launch from Earth, Riley proposed sending a final message to the memory banks of each spacecraft as a final tribute to the Golden Records each spacecraft carries. The resulting campaign harnessed Facebook to crowdsource a short message, less than 1000 characters long, to present to NASA to send.
In 2019 Riley collaborated with 59 Productions, on their Smithsonian Air and Space Museum commission "Apollo 50:Go for the Moon" - writing the show and creating a film to complement projections onto the Washington Monument to tell the story of Apollo 11 for the 50th anniversary of the mission in July that year.
In the run-up to NASA's Perseverance mission touching down on Mars in 2021 Riley created an artwork called Worlds Apart, that mapped all NASA's previous Martian landing sites back onto their equivalent locations on Earth in terms of latitude and longitude, to draw attention to climate change. Following the successful Mars 2020 landing, Riley teamed up with the BBC World Service radio programme Digital Planet to find volunteers to travel to Andegaon Wadi, Sawali, in the central Indian state of Maharashtra (18.445°N, 77.451°E) which mapped onto the new Perseverance landing site.
Books
Riley has written, co-written and contributed to over a dozen books, including Where once we stood, a collaboration with artist and illustrator Martin Impey, nominated for a Kate Greenaway medal in 2020.
Riley, Christopher; Impey, Martin (July 2024). Where once we stood - the Artemis Edition. Harbour Moon Publishing. p. 132pp. ISBN 978-1916062511.
Riley, Christopher; Impey, Martin (July 2019). Where once we stood. Harbour Moon Publishing. p. 128pp. ISBN 978-1916062504.
Riley, Christopher; Dolling, Phil (April 2019). Apollo 11 owners' workshop manual - 50th anniversary edition. Haynes. p. 216pp. ISBN 978-1785215926.
Riley, Christopher, Corfield, Richard and Dolling, Phil (August 2015). Voyager 1 & 2 owners' workshop manual. Haynes. p. 200pp. ISBN 978-0857337757.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Charman-Anderson, Suw, ed. (October 2013). A Passion for Science. Stories of Discovery & Invention. Ada Lovelace Day. p. 106pp.
Harris, Gemma, ed. (October 2013). Does my Goldfish Know who I Am. Faber and Faber. p. 336pp. ISBN 978-0571301935.
Riley, Christopher, Woods, David and Dolling, Phil (November 2012). Apollo Lunar Rover owners' workshop manual. Haynes. p. 192pp. ISBN 978-0857332677.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Harris, Gemma, ed. (October 2012). Big Questions from Little People. Faber and Faber. p. 336pp. ISBN 978-0571288519.
Morris, Langdon; Cox, Kenneth, eds. (October 2012). International Cooperation for the Development of Space. Aerospace Technology Working Group. p. 518pp. ISBN 978-1478186236.
Selected articles
Christopher Riley (1 April 2026). "This Artemis moon mission is a truly unifying international project, one of the few we have left". London: The Guardian.
Christopher Riley (April 2020). "Is space poised to take another giant leap?". Vienna, Austria: Room.
Christopher Riley (20 July 2019). "Going back to the Moon is vital for the survival of the human race". London: Evening Standard.
Christopher Riley (20 April 2015). "Twenty five years on: Hubble's unsung heroes". The Guardian. London.
Christopher Riley (8 January 2013). "Tire Tracks to Our Future: 40th Anniversary of NASA's Lunar Rover". Houston: America Space.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
Christopher Riley (21 October 2012). "Voyager: the space explorers that are still boldly going to the stars". London: The Observer.
Christopher Riley (20 July 2010). "Sound restored to mission control film shot during Apollo 11 Moon landing". The Guardian. London.
Christopher Riley (8 November 2004). "Pushing Frontiers in TV Space". BBC News.
Christopher Riley (5 May 1999). "When Worlds Collide". BBC News.
Christopher Riley (23 March 1994). "All the answers from dial-a-boffin". The Independent.