— It was an event that set off a "shock across the nation," but until now has only been seen from an outside perspective.

From the creators' of the critically-acclaimed "For All Mankind" comes "Star City," an eight-episode spinoff series debuting on Apple TV with two episodes on Friday, May 29, followed by one new episode every Friday through July 10.

"'Star City' is a propulsive paranoid thriller that takes us back to the key moment in the alt-history retelling of the space race — when the Soviet Union became the first nation to put a man on the moon. But this time, we explore the story from behind the Iron Curtain, showing the lives of the cosmonauts, the engineers and the intelligence officers embedded among them in the Soviet space program, and the risks they all took to propel humankind forward," reads the series' synopsis provided by Apple TV.

"For All Mankind," now up to its fifth season (debuting March 27), established during its first episode that instead of NASA astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, it was Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov who first to set foot on the lunar surface in 1969. Since then, the series has included fleeting looks inside the Soviet space program, but has focused most of its attention on how the United States reacted over the decades that followed.

Now, in eight stills from the new production, Apple has offered a "first look" at the "Star City" cast and some of the sets.

In one shot, for example, Rhys Ifans ("House of the Dragon") is seen as the Chief Designer, the title by which the Soviet Union's lead rocket and spacecraft engineer Sergei Korolev was known up until his death. Another still shows Anna Maxwell Martin ("Motherland") as Lyudmilla, the head of the KGB surveillance department at the cosmonaut training center at Star City, from where the series gets its name.

Alice Englert ("Bad Behaviour") is seen in a spacecraft (or perhaps simulator) as Anastasia, a yet-to-fly female cosmonaut. She is inside the capsule with another trainee, who is out of focus so may or may not be Adam Nagaitis ("Chernobyl") as Valya, a revered veteran cosmonaut.

Other scenes include Solly McLeod ("House of the Dragon") as Sasha, a reckless cosmonaut; Priya Kansara ("Bridgerton") as Lakshmi, a skilled scientist; and Ruby Ashbourne Serkis ("I, Jack Wright") as Tanya, a cosmonaut's wife.

There is also a still from inside the recreated TsUP, or Soviet mission control, with Josef Davies ("Andor") seated among the rows of flight controllers.

Thus far, the series' published credits do not include any crossover cast members from "For All Mankind," unlike the series' creators, Ben Nedivi, Matt Wolpert and Ronald D. Moore, who are the same.

Wolpert and Nedivi also serve as showrunners and executive produce alongside Moore, Maril Davis of Tall Ship Productions, Andrew Chambliss and Steve Oster. "Star City" and "For All Mankind" are produced by Sony Pictures Television.