PBS has spent decades building some of the most memorable documentaries about space, and the network’s latest round of picks shows just how wide that range runs. From the Voyager probes crossing into interstellar space to the Apollo 11 anniversary, these films cover the small and the enormous with equal care.
The Planets and The Solar System
The BBC partnered with PBS on two sweeping series. The Planets ran five episodes, each centered on a major world — inner planets, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the icy outer realms — tracing their origins and history through footage and data from space missions, plus striking computer animation.
The Solar System, which premiered in 2024, takes a wider view, looking at the forces shaping the planets themselves: storms, volcanoes, extreme weather, strange gravity, superionic ice, hidden oceans, asteroids, and more.
Black Holes and the Moon Race
NOVA’s Black Hole Apocalypse is a gentle entry point for anyone new to the genre. It treats black holes as both mysterious and vaguely terrifying, mixing an introduction to what we know about their origins and role in cosmic evolution with interviews featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson and Paul Murdin, who helped discover the first confirmed black hole.
Chasing the Moon, a three-part American Experience film, marked the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Director Robert Stone used previously unseen archival material to look at the space race in a broader context, tying together scientific innovation, political calculation, media spectacle, and social turmoil.
Voyager and Beyond Pluto
The Farthest: Voyager in Space celebrated the Voyager mission’s 40th anniversary in 2017. Launched in 1977, the probe was meant for a five-year trip to Jupiter and Saturn, but it kept going. It crossed into interstellar space in August 2012 and is now 15 billion miles from Earth, the farthest human-made object ever, still sending data back — a feat that now takes 22 hours per transmission.
Both Voyager probes carry Golden Records with greetings in 55 different languages and music ranging from Beethoven to Chuck Berry, carrying human voices out into the vastness of our universe.
NOVA’s Chasing Pluto and Pluto and Beyond cover NASA’s New Horizons mission. The first episode aired the night after the probe’s flyby, giving audiences immediate access to the stunning photos that renewed wonder in the universe. It also revealed the famous heart-shaped feature on Pluto’s surface.
The second episode, airing three years later, looks at the Kuiper Belt, the least understood region of our solar system. Now four billion miles from Earth, it’s the most distant flyby in NASA’s history.
People Behind the Program
Once Upon a Time in Space, a four-part 2026 documentary from PBS and the BBC, focuses on the people who made space exploration possible. Directed by James Bluemel, it draws on the team behind Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland, and it centers on astronauts, cosmonauts, scientists, ground support, and family members discussing key milestones and geopolitical rivalries.
| Documentary | Focus |
|---|---|
| The Planets | Origins and history of each major planet |
| The Solar System | Forces shaping the planets |
| Black Hole Apocalypse | Introduction to black holes |
| Chasing the Moon | Apollo 11 anniversary history |
| The Farthest | Voyager’s journey into interstellar space |
| Chasing Pluto/Pluto and Beyond | New Horizons mission |
| Episode | Year | Subject |
|---|---|---|
| Chasing Pluto | 2015 | Pluto flyby night |
| Pluto and Beyond | 2019 | Kuiper Belt |
These films show PBS at its best: combining visual spectacle with deep scientific investigation, and often with a human story at the center.
See the video the story is built around at The A.V. Club.
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