by Thinus Ferreira
The past week's spectacular and successful Nasa launch of Elon Musk's SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral in Florida in the United States gets primetime billing tonight on Discovery Channel (DStv 121) with a special 2-hour documentary, Nasa & SpaceX: Journey to the Future at 20:00.
Discovery that spent over a year documenting SpaceX's race to become the first private company to launch American astronauts into space was also there on 30 May 2020 when the successful launch took place.
"In our 2-hour documentary, we show the unbelievable engineering and scientific feats achieved by SpaceX in making such a historic launch happen," says Scott Lewers, executive vice president of multiplatform programming, factual & head of content, at Discovery's Science channel.
The mission, known as Demo-2 that used a Falcon 9 rocket, also built by SpaceX, to propel it, saw veteran astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley launch into space to the International Space Station (ISS) on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft.
The Discovery Channel special on Saturday night, 6 June 2020 at 20:00 will feature commentary from astronauts, engineers and other special guests, as well as unprecedented coverage of the launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
The special includes an in-depth interview with the SpaceX Founder and chief engineer Elon Musk, as well as several incredible stories about this historic space achievement.
The Discovery film crew was granted unprecedented access to NASA and to SpaceX headquarters, giving viewers a rare glimpse inside Launch Control and first-hand accounts from Elon Musk, as well as astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, and NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine.
Nasa & SpaceX: Journey to the Future reveals the behind-the-scenes action with the teams of SpaceX engineers, NASA employees and scientists as they fulfil the SpaceX mission to "fly, test, and fix" their way to the ISS – with the goal of eventually flying to the moon and to Mars.
Nasa & SpaceX: Journey to the Future repeats on Discovery Channel on Monday 8 June at 22:35, Wednesday 10 June at 17:55 and Friday 12 June at 11:00.
