Watch Real NASA Apollo Mission Films Free
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During the space race NASA produced short documentary films about its missions, made for the public, for television and for schools. They were narrated, carefully edited, and built from the footage the astronauts shot themselves plus film from the ground. Because they were made by a U.S. government agency, they are in the public domain – and they are some of the best space footage you will ever see. Starlite TV airs a full set of them on Doc Vault, our documentary channel, and the earlier Mercury and Gemini films on Rocket Age.
Each film runs about half an hour, which makes them easy to drop into. Here’s the story they tell, in order.
Getting the hardware ready
Before anyone flew, the machines had to be proven. Apollo 4 & Apollo 5 Missions covers two uncrewed test flights: Apollo 4 in November 1967, the first launch of the giant Saturn V rocket, and Apollo 5 in January 1968, which tested the lunar module in Earth orbit.
The Flight of Apollo 7 is the first crewed Apollo flight. Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele and Walter Cunningham spent eleven days in Earth orbit in October 1968 putting the command module through its paces, and sent back the first live television broadcasts from an American spacecraft.
Going to the Moon
Apollo 8: Go for TLI tells the story of the first crew to leave Earth orbit. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders orbited the Moon over Christmas 1968, and Anders took the photograph we now call Earthrise. "TLI" in the title is trans-lunar injection, the engine burn that sends a spacecraft out of Earth orbit toward the Moon.
Apollo 9: Three to Make Ready covers the flight that tested the lunar module with a crew aboard, in Earth orbit, in March 1969. Jim McDivitt, Dave Scott and Rusty Schweickart flew the command module, nicknamed Gumdrop, and the lunar module, Spider, and Schweickart stepped outside to test the backpack later used on the Moon.
Apollo 10: To Sort Out the Unknowns is the dress rehearsal. In May 1969 Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan took the lunar module, Snoopy, down to within about nine miles of the lunar surface while John Young waited in orbit in Charlie Brown.
Then The Eagle Has Landed: The Flight of Apollo 11. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed the lunar module Eagle on the Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969, while Michael Collins orbited overhead in Columbia. Even if you’ve seen the famous clips a hundred times, seeing the mission laid out as NASA’s own film-makers presented it at the time is a different experience.
Science on the Moon
The later films get more scientific, and more beautiful. Apollo 12: Pinpoint for Science follows Pete Conrad and Alan Bean’s precision landing in November 1969 right next to Surveyor 3, an uncrewed probe that had landed two and a half years earlier; they walked over to it and brought pieces home.
Apollo 13: Houston, We’ve Got a Problem is NASA’s account of the April 1970 mission on which an oxygen tank failed on the way to the Moon. Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise used the lunar module as a lifeboat and came home safely. It is gripping even when you know the ending.
Apollo 14: Mission to Fra Mauro covers Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell’s landing in the Fra Mauro highlands in February 1971 – Shepard, America’s first astronaut, finally made it to the Moon, and yes, he hit golf balls there.
Apollo 15: In the Mountains of the Moon is the first mission with the Lunar Roving Vehicle. Dave Scott and Jim Irwin drove it around the Hadley-Apennine region in the summer of 1971, and the film has some of the most striking landscapes of the whole program. Apollo 16: Nothing So Hidden takes John Young and Charlie Duke to the Descartes highlands in April 1972. And Apollo 17: On the Shoulders of Giants covers the last crewed landing, in December 1972, with Gene Cernan and geologist Harrison Schmitt – the only professional scientist to walk on the Moon – exploring the Taurus-Littrow valley.
For an overview, Time of Apollo looks back at the program as a whole.
Before and after Apollo
On Rocket Age, alongside the classic science fiction, you’ll find the films that set the stage. Friendship 7 covers John Glenn’s flight of February 1962, when he became the first American to orbit the Earth. Four Days of Gemini 4 includes Ed White’s spacewalk, the first by an American, in June 1965. Proud Conquest: Gemini VI and VII shows two crewed spacecraft meeting in orbit for the first time in December 1965, and Gemini XI follows Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon’s 1966 flight. There are also early Project Mercury reports, such as Project Mercury: Mercury-Redstone 1 Launch.
Back on Doc Vault, the story continues with America’s first space station in Skylab: Space Station I and Skylab: The Second Manned Mission – A Scientific Harvest, the early shuttle years in Space Shuttle Columbia: Second Flight and Shuttle: A Remarkable Flying Machine, and the Mariner 10 probe’s visit to the innermost planet in Mercury: Exploration of a Planet.
Why watch them here
You can find many of these films scattered across the internet in various states, but on Starlite TV they’re part of a live channel that runs all day, so you can leave Doc Vault on in the background and catch a mission every half hour or so. Each title’s page shows when it airs next. They’re great for classrooms and kids, too – short, clear and real. Tune in to Doc Vault any time.