When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions
When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions | |
---|---|
historical | |
Narrated by | Gary Sinise |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
No. of episodes | 6 |
Production | |
Running time | 6 hours (6 1-hour-long episodes, originally aired as a double bill) |
Original release | |
Network | Discovery Channel |
Release | June 8 July 13, 2008 | –
When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions (or NASA's Greatest Missions: When We Left Earth in the UK) is a 2008 Discovery Channel HD documentary miniseries consisting of six episodes documenting American human spaceflight from the first Mercury flights and the Gemini program, to the Apollo program and its Moon missions and landings, to the Space Shuttle missions and the construction of the International Space Station.
The miniseries was created in association with NASA to commemorate the agency's fiftieth anniversary in 2008. It first aired on June 8, and concluded on June 22. Each airing consisted of two hour-long episodes. The miniseries was then released on DVD on July 10, 2008, and released on Blu-ray disc on August 12.
Production
Development
Discovery partnered with NASA in September 2007 to create the series.[1] The Discovery team went through 500 hours of archived film and selected 150 hours of it to be transferred to high definition.[2] Discovery donated the high definition film back to NASA.[1] The airing of the miniseries was timed to coincide with NASA's 50th anniversary.[3]
Executive producers and showrunners
The miniseries features interviews from Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Space Shuttle astronauts including
The series was narrated by actor Gary Sinise, who played astronaut Ken Mattingly in the 1995 film Apollo 13. It was executive produced by Richard Dale and Bill Howard and edited by Peter Parnham and Simon Holland.[4]
One purpose of the series was to tell the space race story to the under 40 generation, which did not experience it firsthand.[2]
Music
The score was composed by
Episodes
No. | Title | Original air date | |
---|---|---|---|
1 | "Ordinary Supermen" | June 8, 2008[7] | |
The first episode of the series documents the start of the are among those interviewed. | |||
2 | "Friends and Rivals" | June 15, 2008[7] | |
The second episode is centered on Project Gemini, the second American human spaceflight program. The episode shows how the astronauts trained for spaceflight. It features the first American Extra-vehicular activity , Ed White. | |||
3 | "Landing the Eagle" | June 15, 2008[7] | |
The third episode details the beginning of the Apollo program, starting with Charlie Duke and Bruce McCandless II and flight director Gene Kranz. | |||
4 | "The Explorers" | July 6, 2008[7] | |
The fourth episode features the five other successful Ocean of Storms. The episode focuses on the "successful failure" of Apollo 13. After the successful Apollo 14, the remaining lunar missions involved more surface exploration. It shows the design and testing of the Lunar Roving Vehicle used in Apollo 15, 16, and 17, and documents the missions. The episode discusses the cancelled lunar missions, including recycling the hardware for use in the space station Skylab . | |||
5 | "The Shuttle" | July 13, 2008[7] | |
The penultimate episode focuses on the flights of the Space Shuttle, beginning with Columbia's maiden voyage on April 12, 1981 (the twentieth anniversary of the first human spaceflight, Vostok 1). The STS-1 crew, commander John Young, and pilot Bob Crippen, are interviewed. Bruce McCandless's untethered spacewalk on STS-41-B - the first in history - is shown digitally remastered in high-definition. The episode also documents the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster that occurred 73 seconds after lift-off on mission STS-51-L, on January 28, 1986, and the subsequent halt of the Space Shuttle program. The episode ends with the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990 on mission STS-31 and the subsequent discovery of its defective mirror. | |||
6 | "A Home in Space" | July 13, 2008[7] | |
The series' final episode centers on the first refurbishment mission of the Hubble Space Telescope, and Michael Lopez-Alegria (the US record holder for number and duration of spacewalks), Ken Bowersox, and Eileen Collins, are featured in the episode. The episode also recalls the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster that occurred during re-entry, 16 minutes from landing at the Kennedy Space Center, on mission STS-107 , on February 1, 2003. |
Release
The first two installments of When We Left Earth originally premiered on Discovery Channel June 8, 2008. Two more episodes were played on the following two Sundays.[1] The miniseries was released on DVD on July 10, 2008, and was released on Blu-ray disc on August 12.
The third episode, "Landing the Eagle", was re-aired on July 20, 2009 for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing.[8] The first episode was re-aired December 11, 2016 in honor of John Glenn, who died December 8, 2016.[9]
Reception
The astronauts involved with the film believed the high definition version of the footage helped capture what they really saw. Astronaut
See also
References
- ^ a b c d Pearlman, Robert (June 6, 2008). "TV Review: When We Stayed Home to Leave Earth". Space.com. Retrieved January 27, 2018.
- ^ a b c Keveney, Bill (June 8, 2008). "Discovery's 'When We Left Earth' aims high". ABC News. Retrieved January 27, 2018.
- ^ Ford, Matt (June 7, 2008). "The NASA Missions: When we left Earth". Ars Technica. Retrieved February 3, 2018.
- ^ Schwartz, John (June 6, 2008). "50 Years of NASA's Home Movies". New York Times. Retrieved January 27, 2018.
- ^ "When We Left Earth, Composer". Richard-Blair Oliphant, Composer. 16 December 2016. Retrieved February 3, 2018.
- ^ "Nominees For The 30th Annual News & Documentary Emmy® Awards Announced By The National Academy Of Television Arts & Sciences". The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Archived from the original on July 5, 2014. Retrieved March 18, 2018.
- ^ a b c d e f "When We Left Earth: Full Episodes". Discovery. Retrieved April 19, 2018.
- ^ "July 20 TV Guide". Discovery. Archived from the original on July 20, 2009. Retrieved March 18, 2018.
- ^ Wall, Mike (December 9, 2016). "John Glenn Tribute: Discovery Channel to Re-Air Documentary Sunday". Space.com. Purch Group. Retrieved February 20, 2018.
- Newspapers.com.
- ^ Staff (October 16, 2008). "When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions". High-Def Digest. Internet Brands. Retrieved February 20, 2018.