Engineering Space

Everybody knows the names of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin but America’s journey into space is much bigger than that. It was the result of the blood, sweat and tears of thousands of men and women who worked behind the scenes in crucial ways - ordinary people who had ‘the big idea’. Men and women who could watch the launch of rockets, the voyages of spaceships and the building of the international space station and know it wouldn’t have happened without them. This is the story of the unsung heroes who took America into space. The first episode looks at the engineers who, against all odds, built humanity's most powerful machine - the Saturn V rocket.

On 20th July 1969, Astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong make history, becoming the first humans to set foot upon the Moon. But landing on the lunar surface challenges a dedicated team of engineers for almost a decade, designing a unique spacecraft - the Lunar Module. This is their remarkable story.

This is the extraordinary story of the engineers who push the envelope to create the world’s first reusable space vehicle, the Space Shuttle - the most complex machine ever made and one that promises to make spaceflight routine.

This is the remarkable story of the people whose engineering prowess and persistence eventually leads to the creation of the most complex structure ever built in orbit: the International Space Station, humanity’s first permanent outpost in space.

It's a technological marvel that's captured breathtaking images of the universe. This is the inside story of the Hubble Space Telescope - an engineering challenge which nearly broke NASA - as told by the unsung heroes who designed, built, and saved it.

The incredible story of the first mission to look for life on another world - told by the engineers charged with safely landing a spacecraft on the surface of Mars and creating a miniaturised laboratory to search for life on the Red Planet.