Liftoff Videos
Every mission, with the videos that tell it
Every mission we cover, by year.
Mission: 2003Published: 31 Oct 2020
A NOVA documentary on the loss of Space Shuttle Columbia, which broke apart over Texas on re-entry in 2003 and killed all seven crew.
Published: 21 Sep 2020
Skylab was a solely US space station that orbited Earth between 1973 and 1979.
Published: 30 May 2020
ABC television and radio coverage from July 1979 follows Skylab's return to Earth.
Published: 18 Apr 2020
A documentary on how Skylab was damaged during its Saturn V launch, when a heat shield was torn away and one solar array was left stuck.
Published: 16 Apr 2020
A NASA Goddard documentary on the Hubble Space Telescope, from its shuttle launch and troubled deployment to the mirror flaw and the servicing missions that followed.
Mission: 1970Published: 11 Apr 2020
NASA's documentary on Apollo 13 draws on interviews with astronauts Jim Lovell and Fred Haise and flight directors Gene Kranz and Glynn Lunney.
Mission: 1986Published: 19 Nov 2019
A long documentary on the January 1986 loss of Space Shuttle Challenger on mission 51-L.
Mission: 1970Published: 2 Oct 2019
Apollo 13 launched April 11, 1970, and was meant to land at Fra Mauro.
Mission: 1986Published: 20 Jul 2019
Challenger STS-51L, carrying seven crew including teacher Christa McAuliffe, began to disintegrate 73 seconds after liftoff on January 28, 1986, killing all seven.
Mission: 1969Published: 6 Jul 2019
An explainer on how NASA sent live television from the Moon during Apollo 11's first moonwalk, watched by 600 million people.
Mission: 1969Published: 23 Oct 2018
Apollo 11 launched on July 16, 1969, carrying Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins.
Published: 1 Aug 2018
This documentary traces how the Hubble Space Telescope was built after the Challenger loss, launched on the shuttle Discovery, and found to have a flawed mirror.
Published: 31 Jul 2018
New Horizons flew by Pluto in July 2015 and returned the first close images of its surface.
Mission: 1970Published: 3 Mar 2018
This 1994 documentary follows Apollo 13 from its April 11, 1970 launch through the oxygen tank explosion on the way to the Moon.
Published: 28 Jan 2018
NASA's New Horizons probe flew past Pluto in 2015 after a nine-year journey, passing about 12,500 kilometers from the surface on 14 July.
Published: 25 Sep 2017
A NASA documentary on Skylab, which launched on May 14, 1973.
Published: 15 Sep 2017
On Sept. 15, 2017, Cassini plunged into Saturn, ending a 20-year mission.
Published: 13 Sep 2017
A New York Times short film on the end of NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which was to dive into Saturn on September 15, 2017.
Published: 12 Jul 2017
The History Guy recounts Skylab, America's first manned space station, built from the second stage of a Saturn V and launched on May 14, 1973.
Published: 4 Apr 2017
NASA JPL's animated video describes Cassini's Grand Finale, in which the spacecraft, running out of fuel after 20 years in space, makes 22 dives between Saturn and its rings before plunging into the…
Mission: 2021Published: 24 Jan 2017
An animation from Northrop Grumman depicts the planned launch of the James Webb Space Telescope on an Ariane 5 and its deployment on the way to Sun-Earth L2, 1 million miles from Earth.
Published: 19 Sep 2016
A documentary tracing the technological leaps that made the International Space Station possible, from Salyut's thruster boosts and Skylab's aircraft communications to the Apollo-Soyuz docking and…
Published: 31 Mar 2016
NASA astronaut Sunita Williams leads a room-by-room tour of the International Space Station, showing the sleep stations in Node 2, the bathroom, the galley, the exercise equipment, the spacesuits…
Mission: 2003Published: 21 Jul 2015
Archive footage from 7 July 2003 shows a foam block fired from a gun at a carbon-reinforced panel from shuttle Atlantis, leaving a hole.
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