posted 05-03-2017 06:16 PM               

We all know Neil Armstrong, John Glenn, Sally Ride, and other icons of America's space program. But behind the scenes, engineers have been the secret heroes, building the spacecraft and instruments that have helped man leave Earth and explore the stars. We reveal the inside stories of how these brilliant minds created such superior machines as the Saturn V moon rocket, the Space Shuttle, and the Hubble Space Telescope, often against incredible odds.

It's 1961 and the Soviets are dominating the Space Race. President Kennedy ups the stakes dramatically, giving NASA until the end of the decade to land a man on the moon. Led by Wernher von Braun, engineers across America work together to build a rocket that will get them to this seemingly impossible destination: the Saturn V. This is the remarkable story of the engineers who rose to the challenge to build the most complex and powerful machine ever made by man, and the impact their phenomenal achievements continue to have to this day.

posted 05-12-2017 12:00 AM               

'America's Secret Space Heroes' revealed in new Smithsonian Channel series

The first launch of NASA's Saturn V moon rocket, 50 years ago this November, did not fly with a crew. There were no astronauts seated atop the giant booster to become the face of the Apollo 4 mission and, as great an accomplishment as it was, there are few, if any people who worked the flight from the ground who rose to the public's attention.

A new television series premiering Sunday (May 14) seeks to correct for that and other space history oversights, some five decades later.