"Explorer 1" is the second episode of "Beginnings Of The Space Age". The 60-minute documentary reveals how JPL and the U.S. Army could have been the first to place a satellite into Earth orbit, had they only been given the chance. That opportunity was lost when the Eisenhower administration, unsure of what the Soviet reaction would be to a satellite launched (in part) by the U.S. Army military, hesitated and assigned the project to a civilian-led program called Vanguard. The Soviet Union launched Sputnik in October 1957, shocking the world and creating the "Race for Space" in the midst of the Cold War. Only after the Vanguard rocket exploded on the launch pad were JPL and the U.S. Army given its chance. The result was Explorer 1, the first successful U.S. satellite, which also achieved the first space science results.

Explores achievements of Eileen Collins, the first woman to pilot and command a spacecraft, paving t...

Social isolation affects millions of people, even Mars-bound astronauts. A savvy NASA psychologist i...

In the year 1957 the cold war expands to space. The Soviet-Union sends Sputnik as the first manmade ...

Sally Ride's groundbreaking journey as the first American woman in space concealed a deeply personal...

The Apollo 17 mission was the final opportunity to collect first hand information about the history ...

The Space Race comes alive through the eyes of the ultimate insider - retired NASA Mission Control F...

With access to the scientists and engineers responsible for the Curiosity rover's on-the-ground expe...

CERN and the University of California-Santa Barbara are collaborating in the search for the elusive ...

In the summer of 1977, NASA sent Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 on an epic journey into interstellar space....
Produced by NASA contractor Rockwell International, this circa 1978 film was made shortly before the...

The first American space station Skylab is found in pieces scattered in Western Australia. Putting t...

Archival material from the original NASA film footage – much of it seen for the first time – plus in...

This feature-length documentary is a portrait of eclipse chasers, people for whom solar eclipses - a...

The film features amazing scenes of places never before seen gathered by key space missions that cul...

Moonscape is a free and freely downloadable high-definition documentary about the first manned Moon ...

Using original footage and interviews, this documentary tells the nail-biting story of Apollo 13 and...
This film presents the principal features of the planets and the National Aeronautics and Space Admi...

The complex engineering challenges that make re-entry into the earth's atmosphere so dangerous. Scie...