"Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he's alive--and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. Chances are, though, he...

Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA's space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space. Selected from a pool of thousands...

With the retirement of NASA's space shuttle fleet in 2011, the role of getting people, satellites and other instruments into space falls to private companies. As of June 2011, there have been only 523 people to reach the 100 kilometer mark (considered human spaceflight), and only 24 have traveled beyond low Earth orbit. It is projected that within ten years, the number of people who will have flown into space will increase by about 600 percent due...

See what real astronauts go through from initial candidate testing in the field to determine physical ability to selected astronauts preparing a mission on earth to be replicated in space.

The first science-fiction film brought out in East Germany, The silent star is based on Stanislaw Lem's mysterious novel, The astronauts (1951). In it, an international expedition is sent to Venus to decipher a message found in the Gobi desert, and discovers it is a declaration of war on Earth. This original and unedited version of the film is here available for the first time with English subtitles. The silent star has its own unique Cold War history....