The 35 Best Movies and TV Shows About Space
Nobody has better stories than people who have ventured beyond Earth, and that probably explains the glut of amazing space movies, shows, and documentaries. Some of the best are conceived around footage of faraway stars and planets taken by the most sophisticated machines in the known universe. Others are equally compelling, Hollywood-produced stories of heroism that are based on actual NASA missions and the men and women who saw them through.
Either way, space movies appeal to us because they suggest we’re capable of great things, even though there remains so much left to explore and discover. These are 30 of our favorite flicks about the space race and the greater quest for knowledge about what else is out there.
1. Apollo 13
“Failure is not an option” in Ron Howard’s 1995 dramatization of NASA’s aborted Moon landing in April 1970. It was a mission plagued with problems before launch, especially when one of the crew members, Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise), is replaced for medical reasons. But it seems like he got off easy when the three men who go up without him experience an explosion, depleted oxygen levels, low power, freezing conditions, and perhaps most tragically, the frustration of passing by the Moon with no chance to land on it and survive. That they make it home is a minor miracle, and a testament to the ingenuity of both the men aboard and those back in Houston.
2. Apollo 11
The first of many documentaries on this list, Apollo 11 deserves a lofty ranking here. Unlike many of the other Apollo- or NASA-related documentaries before it, this one is comprised exclusively of archival footage, meaning no talking head documentaries to explain the importance of a particular person or moment after the fact. For younger viewers, it’s a little like experiencing the Moon landing like their parents did.
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3. Hidden Figures
Before the Moon was within reach, orbiting the Earth was what NASA strived for, and that became possible thanks to the work of so many men and women, including the three primary characters featured in Theordore Melfi’s 2016 drama.
As female mathematicians, Katherine Goble Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughn (Octavia Spencer), and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae) must deal with sexism from their male superiors and subordinates who assume they’re secretaries, and as African-Americans, they face even more prejudice, including systemic things like having to walk a half mile or more to find a “colored” bathroom on NASA’s campus. Their triumph over these obstacles is inspiring, and the film serves as a wonderful historic document of women whose stories deserved to be more widely known.
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4. For All Mankind
This 1989 documentary by director Al Reinert was originally released like Apollo 11 was—using just archival footage of six of the Apollo missions—but audiences didn’t respond to that technique at the time. So it was redone with interviews Reinert did with 13 Apollo astronauts years earlier, and that version is a gold standard for not only space documentaries, but also non-fiction filmmaking.
5. In the Shadow of the Moon
Like For All Mankind, this documentary directed by Brian Sington and presented by Ron Howard chronicles the history of the Apollo missions using a mix of archival footage and interviews. This one features 10 astronauts who either walked on or orbited the Moon, and because it’s 20 years younger than For All Mankind (and more than 30 years younger than most of that film’s interviews), it serves as a wonderful companion piece and depiction of the way memories and legacies shift.
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6. First to the Moon: The Journey of Apollo 8
Released last year, this documentary takes the approach of several of the Apollo 11 docs by blending archival footage with interviews of the crew—Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders—in honor of the 50th anniversary of this landmark mission.
7. First Man
Ryan Gosling plays Neil Armstrong in this surprisingly sedate, but extremely moving biopic. The film delves into the tragedies that impacted his pre-Apollo life, including the death of his young daughter and two close colleagues, but it’s Claire Foy playing Armstrong’s wife, Janet, who steals the show and earned an Oscar nomination.
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8. The Right Stuff
Based on the book by Tom Wolfe, this remarkable 1983 drama starring Ed Harris, Scott Glenn, and Dennis Quaid tells the story of the Mercury 7 astronauts and the friendly but fierce competition among them to become the first American into space and, later, the first American to orbit the Earth.
9. October Sky
While not directly based on a space program, this film’s lead character, young Jake Gyllenhaal’s Homer Hickam, went on to become a NASA engineer as an adult. Growing up in rural West Virginia, Hickam was always meant to work in the coal mines like his father and his father’s father. But after the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, he becomes enthralled by rocketry, a hobby that is nurtured by an extremely caring and attentive science teacher (Laura Dern). Men and women of a certain age will have watched this one a dozen or so times when they had a substitute teacher in science class, but it holds up extremely well 20 years later.
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Cosmos: A Personal Voyage
This PBS miniseries was a pivotal moment in science TV, sparking the curiosity of a whole new generation when it aired in 1980. Brilliantly written by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, and Steven Soter, and presented by Sagan, the show jumps between theories of the creation and nature of the cosmos to other fascinating comparisons in history, biology, and fiction. The show’s excellent soundtrack, which included amazing songs by the late composer Vangelis, is a beautiful achievement. Neil deGrasse Tyson fronted a follow-up series subtitled A Spacetime Odyssey in 2014 which is also great, though many have more nostalgia for the original.
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10. A Brief History of Time
Moving beyond NASA’s crewed missions, there are a lot of thinkers who have impacted the way we think about the entire universe, and one of the most influential is Stephen Hawking for his work in quantum mechanics and theories about black holes. His book, A Brief History of Time, walks readers through what we know or think we know about the universe dating all the way back to the Big Bang.
The documentary version of the book deviates a fair amount and instead focuses on Hawking’s life and struggle with ALS, but there’s still a great amount of information that Hawking makes digestible for a novice in a way that few geniuses like him can.
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11. The Theory of Everything
In 2014, a dramatization of Hawking’s life came out starring Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones (as Hawking’s wife, and later ex-wife, Jane). This version of Hawking’s story steers even further away from the origins of the universe, but fans of his will find a lot to love here. It’s based on Jane’s memoir, Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen, which makes it a great companion piece to the A Brief History of Time documentary.
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12. From the Earth to the Moon
Before Bryan Cranston became Walter White, he portrayed Buzz Aldrin in this 12-part, 1998 HBO miniseries that told the complete story of the Apollo program in the 1960s and ‘70s, from the origins of the Space Race to Apollo 17, the final lunar mission. From a stacked cast to inventive storytelling techniques, the Tom Hanks-produced masterwork feels as thrilling today as it did back then.
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13. Eclipse Over America
In 2017, a total solar eclipse swept across North America. NOVA captures the excitement of amateur astronomers and enthusiasts as well as NASA scientists who raced to set up experiments to study the eclipse. The agency launched weather balloons, sent aircraft into the skies and fixed a global network of telescopes at the sun as it shrank behind the moon. The documentary provides a fascinating look into one of the most dramatic cosmic events in recent years.
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14. Mercury 13
The Mercury 7 astronauts were among the biggest celebrities in the country during the late 1950s, but the lesser known Mercury 13 were accomplished and kick-ass women who passed the same physiological tests as Alan Shepard, John Glenn, and the rest but were nonetheless denied admittance into NASA’s space program. This Netflix documentary chronicles their efforts, as well as the institutional sexism that blocked their path to the stars and allowed the Soviets to beat the U.S. by 20 years when it came to sending a woman into space.
Apollo 10 1/2: A Space-Age Childhood
Directed by Richard Linklater, Apollo 10 ? looked back at his childhood watching the Apollo 11 moon landing, embellishing the real history with a fantastical narrative where a kid is plucked from his ordinary life for a lunar mission. The film used a process of translating animation onto live-action footage that Linklater had refined in earlier films Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, and the animation style perfectly captured the nostalgic mood of the story here.
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15. Stellar
Not all great programming about our quest to conquer space is “cinematic,” and of the great space miniseries out there, PBS’ Stellar is one of the freshest and easiest to digest. It premiered in June and runs for six mini-episodes (about seven minutes long a piece), and its knowledgeable hosts take viewers to labs around the country where some of space’s biggest questions—like, “What does a black hole look like?”—aren’t just being asked and explored, but also solved.
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16. When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions
This Discovery Channel miniseries from 2008 (the 50th anniversary of NASA’s founding) covers Apollo in great detail, but it also spends significant time on the Mercury and Gemini missions, Space Shuttle program, Hubble telescope, and International Space Station.
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17. Fight for Space
This is the first (of many) documentaries on this list with more of a forward-thinking mindset. Instead of resting on 50 years of laurels, director Paul Hildebrandt and his impressive array of interview subjects (including Bill Nye, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, retired NASA flight director Gene Kranz, and Apollo 13’s Jim Lovell) want to know why we haven’t been back to the Moon since the early 1970s, why we aren’t pushing more aggressively toward Mars, and why NASA’s funding levels have been stuck in neutral for decades.
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18. The Mars Generation
In The Martian, Matt Damon forever shaped our perception of astronauts exploring Mars as individuals who are impossibly resourceful and determined (the type who can turn poop into potatoes), and this Netflix documentary reinforces it by introducing us to the men and women who want to be the next Mark Watney.
They’re all singularly focused (even if it means sacrificing a more traditional social life at school), and they’re frustrated by the apparent bureaucracy that has kept a crewed Mars mission at arm’s length so far. But they’re funny, brilliant, inspirational, and absolutely have the right stuff.
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19. Death Dive to Saturn
NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission set out in TK to explore Saturn and its many moons. Over the course of the TK-year-long mission, the spacecraft unraveled the secrets of the ringed planet, explored the surface of the moon Titan (Here's looking at you, Huygens!) and discovered critical evidence that Enceladus might be a good spot to look for life.
NOVA's look at the final moments of mission is surprisingly emotional. Stirring interviews with the staff that operated the spacecraft and stunning images from its descent reveal just how important this mission was in illuminating some of the most intriguing places in the solar system.
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Good Night Oppy
If you want to feel for a man-made rover like a real-life Wall-E, Good Night Oppy tells the incredible real-life story of the Opportunity rover, which lasted for 15 years after being expected to stay functioning for only 90 days. Narrated by Angela Bassett, Opportunity’s journey is chronicled by interviews with scientists, archival footage, and gorgeous recreations of the rover on the Mars surface.
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20. The Last Man on the Moon
Eugene Cernan was the commander of the Apollo 17 mission—to date NASA’s last to land on the lunar surface. It took off on December 7, 1972, and returned to Earth on December 19 of the same year, and as he re-entered the lunar module a few minutes after his colleague, Harrison Schmitt, Cernan remains the last man to have set foot on the Moon. This documentary tells the story of this mission, his personal life, and what bearing that unique distinction means.
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21. Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo
While astronauts get most of the attention and acclaim (as well as most of the documentaries), it’s the guys on the ground—the ones who help our more familiar heroes blast off and re-enter Earth safely—who get the spotlight in this film. And some of their stories are fascinating, like Steve Bales, who started as a tour guide in Houston before working his way up to the title of guidance officer.
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23. Space Station 3D
If Toni Myers is like the Martin Scorsese of space documentaries, then Space Station 3D is her Goodfellas. It’s especially notable for being the first film ever shot in outer space, and it chronicles one of the great engineering feats of all-time: the in-orbit assembly of the International Space Station. The film, which is narrated by Tom Cruise, is also notable for its box office returns. It was released in 2002 and still plays in IMAX theaters today, which has allowed it to gross more than $93 million in the United States, a record for IMAX format films.
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24. Hubble
Myers’ follow-up to Space Station is narrated by another cinematic superstar—Leonardo DiCaprio—and takes viewers on an unprecedented ride into deep space thanks to the remarkable technology of the Hubble Space Telescope. First, we get to follow the crew of the Space Shuttle Atlantis on a mission to repair the telescope before getting washed away in spectacular 3D-rendered images of some of Hubble’s conquests, including Saturn’s aurora, the Orion Nebula, and the Andromeda Galaxy.
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24. Black Hole Apocalypse
Black Hole Apocalypse explores what black holes are and why they're so difficult to study. This NOVA-produced documentary first aired in 2017 and, well, a lot has happened since then. (That incredible image of the black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy, for instance.) But it's still a great documentary that unpacks the intrigue of these truly enigmatic celestial objects.
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25. Roving Mars
This IMAX documentary traces, from conception to operation, the Mars Exploration Rovers named Spirit and Opportunity using computer-generated imagery to share what they found on the Martian surface.
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26. Journey to the Edge of the Universe
Using a single take, this National Geographic documentary starts on Earth and takes us through our solar system, pausing at Saturn’s moon Titan to ask if it could sustain life. It then travels more than 90 trillion kilometers to the Pillars of Creation, where stars are born, and the star Gliese 851, which is roughly the same age as the Sun and has a planet approximately the same distance as Earth is to the Sun.
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27. The Farthest: Voyager in Space
No manmade object has traveled as far from Earth as Voyager 1, and its twin is a relatively close second. More than 14 billion and 11 billion miles away, respectively, they gave us unprecedented knowledge of the outer planets of our solar system before making interstellar travel a reality in 2012. This PBS documentary tells their story and shares some of the most breathtaking, unfathomable images that have ever existed.
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28. The Challenger Disaster
There are a handful of moments in history that most men and women alive at the time could tell you exactly where they were when it happened. The tragic explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986, just 73 seconds after liftoff, is one of them. This tasteful BBC and Science Channel production stars William Hurt as Dr. Richard Feynman and focuses on his investigation into what went wrong.
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29. Cosmonauts: How Russia Won the Space Race
While it seems a little crazy to say this now, there was a lengthy time when the space program of the Soviet Union far outclassed the American version. After all, they were the first to put an object (Sputnik I) into Earth’s orbit. They also put the first animal, man, and woman in space, and they controlled the first probe to ever impact the Moon. When we got boots on the lunar surface ahead of them, the script flipped, but this British documentary production acknowledges their feats and features interviews with many of the cosmonauts who achieved them.
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30. The Lebanese Rocket Society
As of 2019, just nine countries are capable of launching a rocket into orbit, but throughout the 1960s, the small nation of Lebanon came very close to joining this exclusive club. Led by Manoug Manougian, a physics professor at Haigazian College, the Society eventually got the attention of the Lebanese government, and the military even provided security for the group’s launches. Their best attempt saw them send a rocket up 90 miles in altitude—just shy of Earth’s low orbit—but they ceased operating shortly thereafter. This documentary, which was released in 2012, details the group’s experiments and chronicles why they disbanded.
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Gagarin
A Russian biopic about the pilot and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man to successfully travel to space, could have done with a bigger budget and had an occasionally meandering plot, but the actors playing Gagarin and other real figures did a great job and sold this dramatization. Some critics complained that the Russian state funding led to the story of Gagarin being more sanitized than it could have been.
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