posted September 06, 2007 11:35 AM               

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NASA Partners With Discovery Communications for 50th Anniversary

NASA and Discovery Communications will join in a broad media partnership to commemorate the space program's 50th anniversary. The space agency, which was created by the National Aeronautics and Space Act, began operations on Oct. 1, 1958.

The announcement was made Wednesday in New York at a premiere screening of "In the Shadow of the Moon," a film in which crew members from NASA's Apollo missions tell their story in their own words. Discovery Channel will air the world television premiere of the film in the summer of 2008.

"This partnership with Discovery enables NASA to bring the excitement of 50 years of exploration and discovery to a wider audience," said Robert Hopkins, NASA chief of Strategic Communications, Headquarters, Washington. "This leverages NASA's compelling content with Discovery's state-of-the-art production capability and technology to tell the NASA story - past, present and future - through a variety of media and platforms."

The partnership will encompass on-air and online components as well as grassroots activities throughout 2008, including educational workshops and local screenings.

Special programming on Discovery in the spring and summer of 2008 will celebrate NASA with never-before-seen archival footage. Podcasts and interactive features at Discovery's Web site will enable viewers and users to take a closer look at NASA's history and its plans for the future.

"We honor not only 50 years of wonder, achievement and surprise; but also look toward a bright future of new discoveries. Our planned 2008 specials and series documenting NASA's greatest moments will inspire a new generation to explore and innovate," said Jane Root, president and general manager, Discovery Channel and The Science Channel, Silver Spring, Md.

NASA and Discovery are teaming through a non-exclusive Space Act Agreement with no exchange of funds.

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posted December 16, 2007 09:10 AM               

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London film crew tells NASA's story

For NASA's 50th birthday in October 2008, Dangerous Films for the Discovery Channel will present the dramatic story of the space agency's pioneering, awe-inspiring missions.

Dangerous Films is a production company based in London. Its production team recently spent two weeks at Kennedy to prepare stories for the six-part series, such as the shuttle's recovery from disaster. The film will also include heroic struggles to break the sound barrier and the Apollo-Soyuz link-up.

According to assistant producer James Leigh, the film company's work for the first part of the project began six months ago. Arranging accreditation for all the Dangerous Films personnel was an early step. Then there were contacts to arrange for interviews, such as with Leroy Cain, Scott Carpenter and Jon Clark, husband of Laurel Clark, who was lost in the Columbia accident. Finally, there were arrangements to be made to film at various locations at Kennedy. That also required the appropriate equipment, most of which was rented in the U.S. In all, the team comprised 11 people for the Kennedy shoot and three vans of equipment.

None of that would have been possible without the help of Kennedy's External Relations Press Site. "Many teleconferences, phone calls and e-mails made it happen, beginning in August," said Manny Virata, lead media projects coordinator.

The company first scheduled scouting trips in August and September to identify sites they wanted to use. Then permissions had to be sought to film there. Some the team handled directly. Most went through the Press Site. Aiding Virata was Mary Hunter of All Points Logistics and NASA's Laurel Lichtenberger, who has the monumental task of accrediting everyone who needs to be on site.

The teleconferences and phone calls eventually hammered out the badging and a schedule of what to shoot, where and when. However, the schedule is a boilerplate, subject to change due to over- or under-estimating shooting times, or people not available when needed. More than one interview had to be rescheduled, even changing venue from Kennedy to Johnson Space Center at a later date.

Near the end of the filming, the photographer decided he'd like to capture some of the historic pads at sunset and sunrise. So the schedule was reworked to include five additional locations before and after the normal work day. The film shoot also was sandwiched around a shuttle rollout.

One of the events on the schedule was filming the interview with Jon Clark, not in a climate- and sound-controlled studio, but at the 195-foot level of the fixed service structure on Launch Pad 39A. That meant hauling a big jib, tracks and camera to that level and setting up in the open with winds of 12 knots. Leigh stated the interview took one month to arrange and one day to shoot, yet probably only a portion of the interview will actually air. The backdrop of the Kennedy environs no doubt was deemed worth the effort.

Other areas the team filmed in November included Launch Pads 5, 14, 19 (the Gemini launch pad), 34 (scene of the Apollo I fire that claimed the lives of Ed White, Roger Chafee and Virgil Grissom), 39A and 39B, the Vehicle Assembly Building, the Columbia debris site, the crawler-transporter, Hangar S and the Launch Control Center where drawings by astronauts' children are displayed.

The production team members were not blase about their job. "Pad 34 was really a remarkable site," said Leigh. "The legacy of the men -- Grissom, Chafee and White -- who died there led to getting a capsule right for a successful launch within a decade. They are heroes of the space age."

Nick Green stressed the project focuses on how all the events of space history came to be, "not just the final outcome. The astronaut interviews are worth hearing because of the more personal, first-person experience being captured."

Dangerous Films will be filming at Kennedy again in 2008 before editing begins in April. It will probably air before October.

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posted February 01, 2008 02:45 AM               

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Discovery Lifts Off On NASA's 50th Anniversary Celebration

Discovery Communications launches its yearlong commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as Founder and Chairman of Discovery Communications John Hendricks headlines a gala celebration on Thursday, January 31, paying tribute to legendary newsman Walter Cronkite.

At the center of NASA and Discovery's partnership is Discovery Channel's landmark summer 2008 special event series When We Left Earth: The NASA Mission airing on consecutive Sundays, June 8, 15 and 22. For the first time ever, audiences will see the space age come to life in vivid, completely digitally remastered high-definition television. Discovery painstakingly restored mission and training footage, making these national treasures available for future generations through the NASA archives.

The NASA/Discovery partnership includes these additional events and initiatives:

• Science Matter! a nationwide, multifaceted initiative aimed at fostering students' interest in science, presented by Science Channel and Comcast and kicked off in Huntsville this past month
  
• Extensive online offerings of archives and podcasts
  
• Science Channel's 2nd annual SPACE WEEK, July 6-11
  
• NASA participation in Discovery's 2008 Young Science Challenge

When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions
Episode Guide

For 50 years, America has led the world in space exploration. Yet the boundless void that begins just 62 miles above us has been visited by no more than 500 people. When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions, a stunning high-definition series from Discovery Channel, opens up space like never before. The missions, the people and triumphs of exploration are revealed in a depth of detail previously experienced only by the astronauts themselves.

Episode 1:
Project Mercury: Ordinary Supermen

NASA, formed in 1958, one year after the launch of Sputnik, is leading the search for test pilots who have what it takes to enter the unknown of outer space. The seven men chosen to fly the Mercury capsule each know what it means to risk their lives. On average, one test pilot a week is dying in an air crash — the danger of riding in a rocket will not faze these men.

Still, the first American in space will face a number of unanswered questions: Will a man in space be able to swallow food or drink? Will he go insane? Will he die from radiation exposure? Faced with fierce Soviet competition, the race is on to answer these and many other important questions. President Kennedy dares America to get to the Moon within 10 years, and early missions are critical steps in a process that will culminate in the ultimate goal of landing a human on the Moon.

Episode 2:
Friends and Rivals

NASA understands that getting to the Moon and back means mastering the art of joining two spaceships in space. With that goal, NASA begins a new program dubbed Gemini and for the first time will launch two men into space in a single spaceship. Gemini is charged with achieving an ambitious set of advanced space travel goals, from long-duration flights to space walks.

Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov completes the first human space walk in 1965, and astronaut Ed White becomes the first American to walk in space a few months later. Still, the challenges of rendezvous and docking with another spacecraft have yet to be accomplished by either NASA or their Soviet counterparts. In a bold, complicated mission, NASA plans for Gemini 6 to fly thousands of miles before catching up with an orbiting Gemini 7 in a breath-taking moment of space choreography. The Moon is in their sights.

Episode 3:
Landing the Eagle

In the summer of 1968 — with the Gemini program having achieved its goals and the Apollo program in full swing — NASA changes the mission of Apollo 8 to be the first manned flight to the Moon. Commander Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders become the first humans to leave the gravitational pull of Earth and see the far side of the Moon. The astronauts of Apollo 8 had traveled farther than any man had before, at 250,000 miles to the Moon and back.

On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 lifts off for a lunar landing carrying Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins and good wishes from the world. The world awaits the crew's Moon fate: Will the lunar module sink into the dust? Will the crew be attacked by "lunar germs"? Will they be able to blast away from the lunar surface once the mission is completed? Four days later, the astronauts land on the Moon. It is NASA's finest hour and one of the most triumphant moments in world history.

Episode 4:
A Home in Space

As NASA's confidence grows, the tentative steps taken by Armstrong and Aldrin are overshadowed by the feats of Charlie Duke, John Young and Gene Cernan (among others), who race around the Moon on lunar rovers. Lunar missions become more ambitious, culminating in Apollo 17's three-day stay in the Sea of Serenity. But budget worries force the cancellation of the final three missions, and the end of the Apollo program brings a search for new objectives.

Man has orbited the Earth, walked in space, crossed from one spacecraft to another and even visited the Moon. NASA begins taking steps to further space exploration by sending Skylab into orbit along with a team of scientists. The Skylab mission would prove that humans could live and work in space for extended periods. U.S. astronauts are eventually invited to live aboard the Russian Mir space station, developing relationships in orbit long before the Cold War thaws out on Earth.

Episode 5:
The Shuttle — Triumph and Loss

For 20 years, NASA had launched capsules carrying a maximum of three people — drawn from an exclusive group of men, nearly all of whom are test pilots. The development of the reusable shuttle leads to a revolutionary approach to space travel. For the first time ever, groups of six or seven astronauts can fly into space at once.

Described as a butterfly on a bullet, the shuttle is first flown by John Young, the man who sat alongside Gus Grissom on the first Gemini flight. The pioneers of NASA's manned programs are leading the way into the modern era of the space age. Yet space travel remains as dangerous as ever, as demonstrated by the 1986 Challenger shuttle disaster and the 2003 Columbia shuttle accident. But the development of the International Space Station — human beings' boldest collaboration in space hardware to date — meant that the shuttle could not be abandoned.

Episode 6:
A New Space Age

Billions of dollars over budget and 10 years behind schedule, NASA launches the Hubble Space Telescope aboard the space shuttle Discovery. One of the most complex instruments ever built, and the latest in an illustrious line of unmanned space missions, Hubble is expected to transform our understanding of the universe. But nothing happens. NASA has a serious problem. It is discovered that human error is to blame for a defective main mirror on the orbiting telescope. Hubble, our all-seeing eye into deep space, is short sighted.

NASA decides to send the crew of space shuttle Endeavour to fix the problem. The mission requires months of intense training for the longest, most dangerous series of space walks of all time. It is NASA's greatest and most high-profile mission since the Apollo era. The mission manages to recapture the public's imagination, engaging people in space heroics like nothing since the Moon landings of the Apollo era. Our natural desire to explore and discover is back, and NASA plans to send men back to the Moon, Mars and beyond.

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posted February 01, 2008 11:38 AM               

collectSPACE.com asked:

Over the past 50 years, astronauts have said that TV broadcasts and photographs do not do justice to the scenes that you and your colleagues have seen firsthand outside spacecraft windows and spacesuit visors. With the advent of high definition TV and projects such as "When We Left Earth" restoring the footage you captured, how much closer is the public to seeing -- quoting yourselves -- the "magnificent desolation" and "intense blackness" of space?

Buzz Aldrin:

What good is high definition TV going to give you looking at space? You know, you are looking at stars, you are looking at black sky... you have to be looking at something. So if you're close to the Moon, then that is going to have a crisp, very clear [surface]. If you're looking inside the spacecraft, it is going to look like you're almost there.

And if you look at another guy's face, you're going to see all the little blemishes and everything else. See, we don't have make-up people who go along on our crew. (laughs)

Charles Duke:

I've watched your [Discovery's] other programs in high definition and it is spectacular I thought. I mean, the first time I bought a high definition TV and watched one of your programs, golly, it was just so vivid. And I think that is going to capture what we see and what we felt and what we experienced, the reality, the vividness, the emotional side of it, that with the grainy TV, the pictures we sent back don't really capture it.

posted May 01, 2008 08:48 AM               

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Discovery Channel has tapped thesp Gary Sinise to narrate its six-hour miniseries "When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions."

Sinise previously narrated the cabler's 1998 program "Inside the Space Shuttle."

"When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions" bows Sunday, June 8, at 9 p.m. and continues over the following two Sundays (June 15 and 22). Special marks the 50th anniversary of NASA and examines the agency from its early days to the present.

"The story of NASA is really America's story -- people coming together with grit, audaciousness and determination," said Discovery Channel prexy-general manager John Ford. "Gary's stirring but straightforward narration conveys that perfectly."

Sinise has been closely identified with space projects through his career, having played astronaut Ken Mattingly in "Apollo 13"; he also starred in the thriller "Mission to Mars."

Dangerous Films is behind "When We Left Earth," which is exec produced by Richard Dale and Bill Howard.

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posted May 01, 2008 10:33 AM               

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And I think that is going to capture what we see and what we felt and what we experienced, the reality, the vividness, the emotional side of it, that with the grainy TV, the pictures we sent back don't really capture it.

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posted May 06, 2008 07:14 AM               

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Former Senator, Astronaut John Glenn Returns to Capitol Hill for Special NASA's 50th Anniversary Presentation

Discovery Channel Transfers Over 100 Hours of NASA Footage to High Definition in Special Archive Project, Archive Presentation - Tuesday, May 6 at 11:00 a.m. in S-115

Who:
Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) and former Senator John Glenn (D-OH) host Discovery Communications Founder and Chairman John Hendricks' official presentation of over 100 hours of newly HD transferred NASA archives to NASA's Administrator Michael Griffin.

What:
In preparing for its epic new special series, When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions, Discovery Channel sourced over a hundred hours of original film and audio from NASA's vaults including film rushes and all the key on-boards filmed by the astronauts themselves. In addition, fragile original audio tape recordings from early space missions, nearly lost to degradation, have been catalogued and painstakingly restored.

Footage both iconic and intimate; from Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, through the Soyuz link up, and the first un-tethered space walk; can now be seen for the first time in High Definition. These priceless national treasures will now officially be back with NASA as part of their permanent archives. This film library will be available to the public at unprecedented quality and resolution for the future generations of scholars, filmmakers and students to learn more about NASA's 50 years of challenge and accomplishment and what the future holds for America in space.

Members of the House and Senate and press will screen clips of the newly HD transferred footage as part of this special event.

Where: The Capitol Building, Room #S-115

When: Tuesday, May 6, 2008 at 11:00 a.m. ET

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