The extraordinary stories of iconic Black Astronauts take flight in monumental Documentary The Space Race that’s already buzzing ahead of its release on The National Geographic Channel and Disney+ Feb. 12.
Check out the trailer below:
In The Space Race, directors Lisa Cortés and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza “profile pioneering Black pilots, scientists, and engineers including Guion Bluford, Leland Melvin, Charles Bolden, and many more who joined NASA to serve their country in space, even as their country failed to achieve equality for them back on Earth,” per the official synopsis.
“It’s these stories that are missing,” said Mendoza in an interview with Deadline. “They are cancellations of moments in history. These stories are sometimes canceled because the people writing them didn’t see the value in keeping them.
We’re in a moment right now, as you can see with this documentary, where the most beautiful thing we can do is rediscover these missing pieces and complete the story. I think it helps enrich everyone’s lives to realize that our world has more information than we’ve grown to appreciate.
With every story whose missing piece we filled, we filled it with something special that had helped enrich its diversity, and we are all the better for it.”
Source: National Geographic
“From 1963, when the assassination of JFK thwarted Captain Ed Dwight’s quest to reach the moon, to 2020, when the echoes of the civil unrest sparked by the killing of George Floyd reached the International Space Station, the story of African Americans at NASA is a tale of world events colliding with the aspirations of uncommon men.”
The bright dreams of Afrofuturism become reality in the buzzy Documentary, turning science fiction into science fact while giving us new heroes to celebrate and a fresh history to explore.”