WORLD'S TOUGHEST FIXES

Travelling to the Atacama Desert in northern Chile – one of the most remote places on Earth – Sean Riley goes galactic to check out the world’s largest telescope at the European Southern Observatory (ESO). Riley and the ESO team must carefully remove a U.S. $15 million mirror and place it into a vacuum chamber and “clean room”, all to remove a seemingly minuscule amount of dust using a special chemical bath. This is no easy feat considering the incredibly delicate mirror and its holding cell weigh a staggering 50 tons. The pressure is high – the 8.2 metre M1 mirror is rare and could take 4-6 years to replace, if damaged. Using a specialised carriage, the team slides the cell and mirror out of the observatory, taking them down the rugged mountain road. With earthquakes frequently hitting this region, a tremor could irrevocably damage the mirror so the men must work quickly. Inside the clean room, disaster strikes after one of the giant washing machine pumps mysteriously breaks down. The job has fallen way behind schedule; will Riley and the team identify the problem and put the mirror back in time so astronomers who have waited months can use the telescope?

At Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, Sean catches up with Boeing’s crack ‘Aircraft on the Ground’ team as they attempt to fix up a 767 suffering from a multimillion- dollar headache caused by the plane slamming into a fence. The giant jetliner needs emergency surgery on a damaged pressure dome but it’s an intricate and dangerous procedure that only the very best engineers are qualified to carry out. Before they get started, Sean gets a ghastly initiation task of emptying the toilets! Monday 13th October at 9pm

Riley joins engineers at the Paranal Observatory in Chile to move a 23-ton, $15-million mirror. If damaged, it will take six years to replace.

Sean attends one of his most dangerous fixes yet, upgrading a 70-tonne steam turbine in a nuclear power plant. But even though the reactor has been shut down, the worksite is still a potential radiation zone. Clothed in his hazmat suit, Sean witnesses a task rarely seen as he joins the army of technicians who must carry out the job. Monday 27th October at 9pm

From dangling from ropes high up in the air to diving beneath a shaky bridge, Sean Riley will try anything to complete his latest fixes.

A cruise around the Caribbean is meant to be about as relaxing as a holiday can get but, when these massive vessels experience problems, the work involved in putting things right is anything but restful. Sean witnesses a nerve jangling race against time as engineers attempt to cram a 320- tonne generator into a giant cruise liner scheduled to set sail in just 20 days. Monday 6th October at 9pm

They provide the lifeblood for our cities and neighbourhoods, but high-voltage lines are imperilled daily by winds, trees, birds and even the electricity itself. And when a power line in the U.S. needs to be serviced, the current must be kept flowing or this densely populated area could be plunged into a blackout. To help repair and maintain the lines, Sean Riley joins an elite corps of engineers who dangle from a helicopter and work with live lines carrying a shocking 500,000 volts of electricity. Before helping the crew take down nearly 5 kilometres of lines to be replaced with a new wire, Riley must first don a protective “hot suit” that will be his only hope of survival when he comes in contact with the live lines.

Take a journey on the dangerous high seas as Sean and a commercial dive team face the elements to replace a barnacle covered piece of machinery weighing 30 tonnes. But, as the machinery is at the bottom of the hull of a huge deepwater construction vessel, the Dutch team faces a high pressured task where one slip could spell disaster. Monday 20th October at 9pm