Sputnik Secrets

NOVA: In October 1957, the US public heard the shocking news that the Soviet Union had successfully launched the first satellite, Sputnik I, thus taking an early lead in the space race. Here, investigators reveal the astonishing story of the politics and personalities that collided over the earliest efforts to get America into space, long before the founding of NASA. It is a tale of anti-communist witch-hunts and inter-service rivalries that managed to stifle America's early rocket pioneers.