NASA's Greatest Missions Episode Rating Graph

NASA made scientific research a primary objective for the flight of Apollo 13. But halfway to the Moon the astronauts were put to the ultimate test when their oxygen tanks exploded. All of a sudden the key objective of the mission had changed radically to one of pure survival. Without the skill and professionalism of both the crew and the engineers back at mission control these men would never have lived to tell the tale.

New requirements for a bigger cargo bay prompted a breakthrough in spacecraft design. The development of the reusable Shuttle sparked a revolutionary approach to space. The Shuttle, described as a butterfly on a bullet, departed on its maiden voyage in April 1981. It was an outstanding success but subsequent missions remained as dangerous as ever, as demonstrated by both the 1985 Challenger and 2003 Columbia Shuttle disasters. But the development of the International Space Station meant that the Shuttle could not be abandoned.

Billions of dollars over budget and ten years behind schedule, NASA finally launched the Hubble Space Telescope, which was expected to transform our understanding of the Universe, but it immediately became clear that NASA had a serious problem. Hubble, the all-seeing eye into deep space, was near-sighted. At the risk of becoming a laughing stock NASA sent a crack team of astronauts to fix the phenomenally costly problem. Their heroic efforts captured the public's imagination in a way not seen since the historic Moon landings, giving NASA the confidence to begin construction of the International Space Station.