Comedy producer and writer Seth MacFarlane (famous for Family Guy) is planning to help return the cult favorite PBS show Cosmos to television. Cosmos, originally hosted by Carl Sagan, will be rebooted, with Neil DeGrasse Tyson as host, on the FOX network.

The reboot of the show may help popularize interest in astrophysics and the possibilities of space travel.

Says Forbes:

MacFarlane’s path to Cosmos started with the Science & Entertainment Exchange, an organization set up by Airplane director Jerry Zucker to help Hollywood work with scientists to ensure shows like CSI are factually correct. Through the group he met the famous astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson. “He said he was going to host Cosmos, and he was trying to sell the show to a cable science network,” says MacFarlane. “I said, ‘Let me take you into Fox and we’ll see what happens.’”

Ann Druyan, Sagan’s widow and the force behind the new Cosmos, says that the network has agreed to make the show using cutting-edge visual technology (the original was one of the first to use green screens) and is letting her have control over the content of the show. “Seth was already a hero in our household because of Family Guy,” says Druyan, who has two sons. “I knew he would be someone with a skeptical nature and an impatience with superstition and nonsense.”

Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey will debut in 2013.