Plot Synopsis

AMERICA'S SECRET SPACE HEROES is a six-part series that reveals the stories of the unsung heroes of the U.S. space program: the engineers, mathematicians, designers and technicians who actually built the machines that put humanity in space. This series unearths the untold stories of the space program -- from the men and woman who created everything from the Saturn V moon rocket to the first successful Mars lander -- featuring some of the world's greatest space endeavors through the firsthand accounts of NASA's engineering geniuses. These incredible minds turned science fiction into reality, taking on the job of building rockets, landers, satellites and everything else NASA needed to conquer space. The astronauts won the glory, but AMERICA'S SECRET SPACE HEROES reveals the men and women who quietly overcame unprecedented challenges to create the lunar lander, the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station, the Hubble Telescope, and the spacecraft that started the march to Mars. The series premiere AMERICA'S SECRET SPACE HEROES: SATURN V tells the story of the engineers who rose to the challenge of Kennedy's once unbelievable dream of launching the first man to the moon. Against all odds, they built humanity's most powerful machine - the Saturn V Rocket. This unprecedented machine paved the way for the first astronauts to land on the moon and for America to win the Space Race within the decade. Subsequent episode feature the lunar module, space shuttle, space station, Hubble telescope, and Viking Mars mission.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Sunday, June 18, 2017 at 10pm ET/PT, Smithsonian Channel premiered "Viking Mars Mission," the season finale of AMERICA'S SECRET SPACE HEROES. After the success of the first manned moon landing, NASA ups the stakes by aiming for a new destination tens of millions of miles away: Mars. This is the inside story of Project Viking. Witness the overwhelming challenges engineers and scientists faced, not only to reach the Red Planet, but to land their spacecraft and deploy computer-operated experiments to answer the universal question: Is there life beyond Earth?