One Small Step: The Story of the Space Chimps

On the eve of the Challenger explosion in 1986 one engineer goes to the extreme to stop the launch. This hot-headed engineer makes a desperate race against the clock to call off the billion dollar multi-delayed Challenger launch, convinced the O-ring seals will fail and kill everyone on board. The Company, Marshall Space Flight and NASA made a business decision. He made a human decision.

The spectacular moon landing in 1969 was also a success of more than 100 technicians and engineers from Germany, some of whom had already revolutionized weapons technology and built rockets in Hitler's service during World War II. The documentary analyzes the entanglements of German NASA employees with the Third Reich.

July 20, 1969. Apollo 11 lands on the surface of the Moon. Such a feat was apparently performed to the greater glory of all mankind, but actually it marked the end of the space race disputed by the two great superpowers of the time in their eagerness to arrive before and the beginning of the spread of the Cold War into space. Nowadays, the struggle continues, but the main competitors and their purposes are others.

A group of maverick scientists on a remote Australian sheep farm are the globe's only hope for obtaining the epic images of man's first steps on the moon.

An average student in average small-town America, inspired by the astronauts she saw on TV, Eileen Collins nurtured a secret dream to fly to space herself. In the 1970's the US military selected women pilots for the first time, and Eileen became one of those daredevil test pilots. Proving herself in this man's world, she then inspired thousands of others when she became NASA's first female pilot of a space shuttle. SPACEWOMAN will show Eileen's experience of the epic violence of a space shuttle launch, a historic docking with a Russian space station, and follow the dramatic tale of one of the most perilous and important missions in the history of space travel. It also tells the very human story of a family, examining the tough background that made Eileen a woman who could manage fear and take command, and as a mother, guide the journey of her own family alongside her extraordinary and risky endeavors.

Apollo astronauts and engineers tell the inside story of Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon. The U.S. space program suffered a bitter setback when Apollo 1 ended in a deadly fire during a pre-launch run-through. In disarray, and threatened by the prospect of a Soviet Union victory in the space race, NASA decided upon a radical and risky change of plan: turn Apollo 8 from an earth-orbit mission into a daring sprint to the moon while relying on untried new technologies. Fifty years after the historic mission, the Apollo 8 astronauts and engineers recount the feats of engineering that paved the way to the moon.

As the Space Race ensues, seven pilots set off on a path to become the first American astronauts to enter space. However, the road to making history brings forth momentous challenges.

Travel alongside the astronauts as they deploy and repair the Hubble Space Telescope, soar above Venus and Mars, and find proof of new planets and the possibility of other life forming around distant stars.

This film shows how far we have come since the cold-war days of the 50s and 60s. Back then the Russians were our "enemies". And to them the Americans were their "enemies" who couldn't be trusted. Somewhere in all this a young girl in Oklahoma named Shannon set her sights on becoming one of those space explorers, even though she was told "girls can't do that." But she did.

John Glenn goes on another journey into outer space for tests on how old age is affected there. His whole life is chronicled in this informative documentary, from his first mission above to his experience as a senator and finally, his blast into space at age 77.