Liftoff Videos
Every mission, with the videos that tell it
Every mission we cover, by year.
Published: 1 Nov 2026
An explainer on why Starship's Super Heavy booster has 33 Raptor engines, giving four reasons: redundancy, avoiding the combustion instability that troubled huge engines like the F-1, the throttle…
Published: 15 Oct 2026
ESA's documentary traces Galileo and EGNOS from the 1990s, when Europe sought independence from GPS, through the GIOVE-A and GIOVE-B test satellites and the first operational launches.
Mission: 2026Published: 19 Sep 2026
NASA's live coverage follows the unpiloted Roscosmos Progress 96 cargo ship through its final approach and automated docking to the Poisk module of the International Space Station.
Mission: 2026Published: 16 Sep 2026
NASA's live coverage follows the launch of the uncrewed Progress 96 cargo craft on a Soyuz 2.1b rocket from Baikonur, carrying 2.8 tons of food, fuel and supplies for the Expedition 75 crew.
Published: 1 Sep 2026
A roundup of space news from the second half of August.
Published: 29 Apr 2026
A documentary tour of the International Space Station told partly through ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet as he prepares for a six-month stay.
Published: 7 Dec 2025
A five-minute survey of space stations: Salyut 1, Skylab, the Salyut program, Mir, the ISS, Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2, the Tiangong Space Station, and planned future stations such as the Lunar…
Published: 6 Dec 2025
This documentary-style explainer covers the early assembly of the International Space Station, from Zarya and Unity in 1998 through the 14 shuttle missions up to 2003.
Published: 12 Jul 2025
A long-form history of the International Space Station, from early station proposals and Space Station Freedom through the Shuttle-era assembly, Expeditions, the Columbia pause, commercial cargo and…
Published: 23 May 2025
A design-focused look at the Mir space station, covering its modules, their origins in Salyut, TKS and Buran hardware, and Galina Balashova's interior design.
Published: 26 Mar 2025
The B1M explains how the International Space Station was built from Zarya in 1998 onward and why it is planned to be brought down in 2030 by a specially modified SpaceX Dragon, ending in the ocean…
Published: 17 Feb 2025
A documentary tour of the International Space Station, described as covering 9,700 m² and about 400 tons.
Published: 14 Oct 2024
A history of the Mir space station from its 1986 core module launch on a Proton rocket to its 2001 deorbit.
Mission: 1998Published: 7 May 2024
A DW documentary on the International Space Station, whose first module, Zarya, was launched on a Proton rocket on 20 November 1998.
Published: 11 Feb 2024
A National Geographic Superstructures episode that takes the International Space Station apart system by system.
Published: 7 Mar 2022
A documentary filmed partly in 3D aboard the International Space Station, following ESA astronaut André Kuipers on his long stay on the ISS and Alexander Gerst through his training in Houston,…
Mission: 1986Published: 1 Nov 2021
A history of the Mir space station, whose core module launched on a Proton-K from Baikonur on 19 February 1986.
Published: 23 Jun 2021
A documentary-style account of the Mir space station, from its 1986 core module launch to the troubled year 1997.
Mission: 1971Published: 18 May 2021
Scott Manley marks 50 years since Salyut 1, the first space station, launched by the Soviet Union in 1971.
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…
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