From the Earth to the Moon

[HBO] HD. 'Can We Do This?' New astronauts undertake a series of groundbreaking but risky Earth-orbit missions.

The tragic death of Apollo's first three astronauts during a pre-launch test haunts the spacecraft's designers as they struggle to come to terms with what happened and find a way to save the moon program.

[HBO] HD. 'We Have Cleared the Tower.' A documentary film crew follows the final preparations for the first manned Apollo launch.

NASA takes its boldest and most controversial step -- an attempt to fly men around the moon and back for the first time in history -- at the end of one of the most cataclysmic years of the century.

Engineers at Grumman Aviation work with NASA and the Apollo 9 astronauts to design, build, and finally test-fly the world's first true space ship -- a lunar module which will hopefully land the first humans on the moon.

[HBO] HD. 'Mare Tranquilitatis.' Conflicts, disastrous simulations and a series of last-minute crises threaten the success of Apollo 11.

The death of a colleague moves Alan Bean from "forgotten astronaut" to lunar-module pilot on the second moon landing. He experiences fear, amazement, disappointment, hilarity, and, most of all, camaraderie aboard "history's ultimate anticlimax."

As the life-threatening consequences of the Apollo 13 accident escalate, so do the tensions among the NASA press corps covering it. Among them, a respected, old-school TV journalist questions the confrontational methods of a younger, slicker colleague.

America's first man in space, Alan Shepard, is grounded with an inner-ear disorder. A thankless new desk job starts to look permanent, until fate -- and surgery -- bring him a chance to rescue the space program.

Geology guru Lee Silver helps Dave Scott and his Apollo 15 crew unravel the moon's mysterious origins by teaching them to become his lunar surrogates, and thus the first fully-trained "field observers" on another world.

A group of young military wives struggle with their new "jobs" handling the national spotlight and a demanding home front. Meanwhile, their astronaut husbands lose themselves in the pursuit of a goal alternately competitive, glamorous, and deadly.

The bittersweet end of the Apollo program -- the final manned journey to another planet -- is juxtaposed with a light-hearted re-creation of the first cinematic imagining of such an endeavor, the 1902 French silent classic "Voyage to the Moon."