The 30 Best Space Documentaries on YouTube (2026)

Start with Cosmic Dawn for the story of building the James Webb Space Telescope. For the outer planets, choose The Footsteps of Voyager. For black holes and the physics behind them, settle in for Black Hole Apocalypse.

These are 30 space documentaries you can watch free on YouTube, including full films, documentary episodes and a few shorter science films. They come from space agencies, public broadcasters, observatories and filmmakers' own channels. You don't need a YouTube TV subscription.

Links and runtimes checked September 13, 2026. NOVA's Return to the Moon is blocked in the UK. YouTube listed no country restrictions for the other 29 when we checked.

Find your next space documentary

The top 10

1. Cosmic Dawn

Before Webb could send back those images of distant galaxies, someone had to build it. NASA's 2025 documentary follows the telescope from Goddard Space Flight Center to the launchpad in French Guiana, with the people who tested and prepared it for flight.

Start here if you're curious about how a telescope this complicated gets into space. NASA made the film, so you hear directly from the team responsible for getting Webb off the ground.

Watch: 1:36:46 · NASA

2. The Footsteps of Voyager

Voyager 2 reaches Uranus and Neptune, while back on Earth the Galileo team struggles to get its spacecraft on the way to Jupiter. JPL tells both stories through archive footage and interviews with the engineers and scientists who worked on the missions.

You get two very different sides of planetary exploration in under an hour: the discoveries and the work it took to reach them. For Voyager's earlier visits to Jupiter and Saturn, start with The Stuff of Dreams.

Watch: 55:43 · NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

3. Decoding the Universe: Cosmos

What fills the universe if so much of it is invisible? NOVA's 2024 episode follows the evidence for dark matter, the expansion of the universe and the search for an explanation of dark energy.

There's plenty here to keep you thinking after the credits. Scientists still don't know what dark matter is; NASA's overview explains what they've learned so far. The YouTube chapters make it easy to revisit a subject.

Watch: 53:56 · NOVA PBS Official

4. The Journeys of Apollo

NASA made this look back at the Apollo program for its 40th anniversary, with narration by Peter Cullen. It's a good place to start if you want the larger story of the Moon missions in about an hour.

Follow it with Apollo 13: Home Safe for a closer look at the mission that became a fight to bring its crew home.

Watch: 57:45 · NASA

5. Black Hole Apocalypse

Astrophysicist Janna Levin spends nearly two hours exploring how black holes form, how astronomers find them and what they have to do with the galaxies around them. NOVA takes the story from collapsing stars to the supermassive black holes at galactic centers.

Set aside an evening for this one. It first aired in 2018, before the first Event Horizon Telescope black-hole image appeared in 2019, so that discovery isn't part of the film.

Watch: 1:53:04 · NOVA PBS Official

6. The Color of Space

Seven Black astronauts talk about how they reached NASA, what they experienced in space and who helped them get there. Stephanie Wilson, Victor Glover and Leland Melvin are among the participants in this 2022 NASA film, drawn from a panel hosted by Vanessa Wyche.

Much of it is conversation: the astronauts describe their ambitions, the barriers they faced and what representation means to them. Put it on when you want to hear their stories.

Watch: 50:08 · NASA

7. Eyes on the Skies

Astronomer Joe Liske takes viewers through the history of the telescope and the discoveries it made possible. The film was made for the telescope's 400th anniversary, so some of the projects described as “future” plans belong to an earlier era.

Watch this before Europe to the Stars or ALMA. It helps explain why astronomers keep building different kinds of instruments to look at the same sky.

Watch: 1:00:06 · European Southern Observatory (ESO)

8. Triumph at Saturn: Part I

Getting Cassini to Saturn took years of planning and engineering. The first half of JPL's documentary follows that work through archive footage and interviews with the people involved.

Start here for the story of how the mission came together, then carry on to Part II for what Cassini found.

Watch: 56:46 · NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

9. Triumph at Saturn: Part II

Cassini has reached Saturn, and now the discoveries begin. The second part follows the mission's science, including the descent of ESA's Huygens probe to Titan.

If Saturn and its moons are what brought you here, this is the episode for you. Allow about two and a half hours if you want to watch both parts together.

Watch: 1:29:53 · NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

10. OSIRIS-REx: To Bennu and Back

Reaching an asteroid was only half the job. OSIRIS-REx also had to collect material from Bennu and bring it back to Earth.

Arizona Public Media's 2023 film follows the mission from spacecraft development through the sample's return. Interviews with Dante Lauretta and his University of Arizona team explain what went into each stage.

Watch: 58:01 · AZPM

More missions, telescopes and astronaut stories

11. Saving Galileo

Galileo's main antenna refused to open. With a Jupiter mission depending on it, the engineers had to find a way to keep the spacecraft useful.

JPL follows the team through that failure and other technical problems. It picks up nicely after The Footsteps of Voyager, which covers Galileo's difficult route to launch.

Watch: 59:36 · NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

12. The Changing Face of Mars

JPL looks back at its early Mars missions, from Mariner 4 to the Viking orbiters and landers. Each mission gave scientists more to work with as they tried to understand the planet.

Watch it for the first attempts to explore Mars: the spacecraft, the puzzling data and the people trying to make sense of it.

Watch: 1:26:07 · NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

13. Europe to the Stars

Where do you build an observatory, and how do you turn the light it collects into a discovery? ESO's 50th-anniversary film follows the people choosing sites, building telescopes and using them to study the universe.

Watch it for the story of the observatory's first five decades.

Watch: 1:01:11 · European Southern Observatory (ESO)

14. Hubble: 15 Years of Discovery

Astronomer Robert Fosbury presents ESA's film about Hubble's first 15 years, from its early problems to its scientific discoveries.

Released in 2005, it catches Hubble partway through its story. A good companion to Cosmic Dawn if you're interested in the work behind space telescopes.

Watch: 1:21:10 · HubbleWebbESA

15. Apollo 13: Home Safe

Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, Gene Kranz and Glynn Lunney are among the people interviewed in NASA's half-hour account of Apollo 13. Original footage and mission-control audio accompany their memories of getting the crew home.

This is a good one for a shorter watch. The Journeys of Apollo gives you the wider history of the program.

Watch: 29:47 · NASA

16. Down to Earth: The Astronaut's Perspective

What does seeing Earth from the International Space Station do to your sense of home? Astronauts describe the view and how it changed the way they think about the planet.

NASA's half-hour film gives you time with those memories. Save it for a change of pace after the launch and engineering stories.

Watch: 29:02 · NASA

17. To the Rescue

Hubble has an optical problem. Magellan has trouble arriving at Venus. Galileo's antenna won't open, and Mars Observer is lost.

JPL brings these missions together in a film about what teams can do when things go wrong far from Earth. Watch it alongside Saving Galileo for more of the antenna story.

Watch: 57:33 · NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

18. Return to the Moon

NOVA follows the preparations, crew training and flight of Artemis II in this 2026 episode. It's called Return to the Moon on PBS, though the YouTube title is different.

Blocked in the UK. The video is available in the US and Canada. If you can't watch it where you are, try Apollo 13: Home Safe.

Watch: 53:50 · NOVA PBS Official

19. The Breaking Point

Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander were both lost during NASA's “Faster, Better, Cheaper” era. JPL's film examines those failures and the pressure on the people running the missions.

It's a longer watch at nearly two hours, with plenty of attention to the decisions made back on Earth.

Watch: 1:47:11 · NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

20. The Hunt for Space Rocks

JPL traces its work on asteroids and comets, from efforts to study Halley's Comet to the search for objects that could threaten Earth.

At just under two hours, this is the longest JPL documentary here. It follows the history of that work; for the story of one recent asteroid mission, try To Bennu and Back.

Watch: 1:52:16 · NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

21. The Stuff of Dreams

Voyager explores Jupiter and Saturn while the people at JPL fight to keep exploration funded. This film follows both the planetary discoveries and the financial pressures back home.

Watch it before The Footsteps of Voyager to follow the missions in order.

Watch: 1:27:14 · NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

22. Explorer 1

Before JPL sent spacecraft to other planets, it helped build Explorer 1. This documentary goes back to the laboratory's work before NASA, the shock of Sputnik and the chance to put a satellite into orbit.

Start here if you want to follow JPL's films from the beginning.

Watch: 53:21 · NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

23. Sky High

JPL turns its instruments toward Earth to measure greenhouse gases. The film follows that work through projects including AIRS and the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3 instrument on the space station.

Pair it with Down to Earth for two ways of looking at our planet from orbit: through scientific instruments and through astronauts' eyes.

Watch: 59:40 · NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Short films, classics and speculative science

24. ALMA: In Search of Our Cosmic Origins

Building ALMA meant getting an observatory onto Chile's high Chajnantor Plateau. ESO's short film follows the international planning and construction that made it happen.

Released for the array's 2013 inauguration, it takes about 17 minutes to watch.

Watch: 16:35 · European Southern Observatory (ESO)

25. How We Made History by Landing on a Comet

ESA looks back at Philae's landing on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Released in 2024 for the landing's tenth anniversary, this short film revisits how the team pulled it off.

At just over nine minutes, it's the shortest film on the list.

Watch: 9:17 · European Space Agency, ESA

26. Universe

This 1960 National Film Board of Canada short uses animation to take viewers out into the cosmos. Roman Kroitor and Colin Low directed it, and the NFB lists it as an influence on Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The science reflects its age. Watch it to see how filmmakers pictured space decades before today's computer animation.

Watch: 27:44 · NFB

27. Life Beyond: Chapter 1

John D. Boswell, better known as melodysheep, combines music, animation and sampled voices to imagine where alien life might exist.

The worlds and civilizations are speculative. That's part of the appeal: the film gives those possibilities a visual form. Boswell's Life Beyond page has background and references for the series.

Watch: 30:26 · melodysheep

28. Timelapse of the Future: A Journey to the End of Time

Melodysheep looks ahead to the future of Earth, the death of stars, black holes and possible endings for the universe. The timescales grow as the film moves farther into the future.

It mixes scientific models with speculation, including imagined civilizations. Think of it as a tour of what might happen, with music and animation to help you picture it.

Watch: 29:21 · melodysheep

29. Timelapse of the Entire Universe

The Big Bang to the appearance of humans in under eleven minutes. Melodysheep compresses cosmic history into a short film built from music, narration and animation.

It's an easy place to start if you're short on time. Follow it with Decoding the Universe: Cosmos when you want more detail.

Watch: 10:50 · melodysheep

30. Oumuamua: A Mysterious Object from Another Star

DW explores the strange object discovered in 2017 and the competing explanations for it. The film also discusses the suggestion that it could be an alien spacecraft, which remains speculation.

NASA's account of what we know and don't know is useful reading alongside the film.

Watch: 43:17 · DW Documentary

All 30 at a glance

Click a title to watch it on YouTube. “None listed” means YouTube showed no country restrictions when we checked. Availability can change.

Watching these on YouTube

Are these official uploads?

Yes. Every link goes to the filmmaker, broadcaster or organization behind the film, including NASA, JPL, ESA, ESO, NOVA, AZPM, the NFB, DW and melodysheep. They're free to watch, though YouTube may show ads.

Do they have captions?

Check the CC menu on YouTube. The available languages vary by film.

Where should I start?

Cosmic Dawn for Webb, The Footsteps of Voyager for planetary exploration, or Black Hole Apocalypse for an evening on black holes. If you only have half an hour, try Apollo 13: Home Safe.

Keep exploring

Try our 30 best documentaries on YouTube for more subjects, or our WW2 documentaries guide for wartime footage and military history.

Prefer to flip channels and see what's on? Channel Surfer turns YouTube into retro TV. To watch one of these films from the beginning, use its link above.