Secrets Declassified with David Duchovny (2025) s01e08 Episode Script

1
Throughout time,
governments and the
people who work for them
have done strange
and even terrible things
in the name of national interest,
especially in the race to control space.
Tonight, the daring theft
of an enemy spacecraft
at the start of the cold war.
There are so many
places where this could fail.
At worst, you're going
to be caught in the act
and they're going to shoot you.
The plan to nuke the moon.
If the Russians really are planning
to hit the moon with a nuclear
weapon, then guess what?
America needs to
beat them to the punch.
And a shocking cover-up of
the space age's worst disaster.
70 coffins have been delivered
to a Russian space center.
Something catastrophic has taken place.
It's time to bring the
secrets of deep space to light.
It's 1959.
The U.S. and the Soviet union
are locked in fierce competition
on earth and in space.
So when the CIA gets the chance
to steal some Russian
technological secrets,
the agency doesn't think twice.
The summer of 1959,
the cold war was still
very much an active conflict,
but things were thawing just a little bit.
Both sides decided that they
should do a cultural exchange.
First stop is New York.
The Soviet union mounts a large display
of some of their main
technical advances.
What's particularly interesting
to the American government is a display
of the Soviet lunar spacecraft.
The Soviets are blazing
ahead in the space race.
In January 1959, they
launch the first spacecraft
to leave earth's orbit.
From the Americans' perspective,
the Soviets can do no wrong.
And they want to find out
how they're so successful.
So American spies
are sent to the exhibition
to check out a replica of the Luna.
But when they get to the display,
they're hit with a pretty big realization.
What they're looking at is not a model.
It's the actual spacecraft
that is being presented to the public.
They're presented with
this incredible opportunity
to get up close to the
Soviets' crown Jewel.
If American space engineers
can somehow take a look inside,
they could work out the
secret of Soviet success.
There's just no way to inspect the Luna
while it's in New York.
It's guarded 24/7 by kgb officers.
But the Soviet exhibition is on tour.
It's moving to Mexico City,
where the CIA have
a much better chance
of getting a closer look.
The Americans decide
to try the unthinkable.
The question is how
do you steal something
the size of a school bus from
under the nose of the kgb?
The CIA come up with a plan.
Wait for the exhibition to finish.
Distract the guards.
And intercept the
Luna while it's in transit.
And if they can get the
truck with the Luna in it,
somehow separate from everything else,
they just might be able to take a look.
And then return it
without anyone realizing.
This is an insane plot.
You're trying to steal a
spaceship from the kgb.
If you do get caught,
they have grounds to
shoot you on the spot.
It sounds like the plot of
a Hollywood heist movie.
But on December 15th,
the CIA makes it happen.
The exhibition is over.
The exhibits are loaded onto trucks
to be stored overnight at a train depot.
CIA already had operatives in place
that were positioned perfectly
to assist in the kidnapping of the lunik.
They make sure the
Luna is on the last truck,
and it heads straight
into rush-hour traffic.
The guards have been working hard.
They're following this truck,
but they want the day to end.
They want to clock out.
There's a farewell party at their hotel,
and nobody wants to miss out.
But what they don't know
is that this big blowout
has been organized by the CIA,
because the plan is to keep
the kgb distracted all night
with beautiful women
and rivers of Tequila.
The Soviet guards leave
the Luna with the truck driver.
What they don't know is that
he's working with the Americans.
The CIA has kidnapped the spaceship
and the plan is working perfectly.
With the Luna now in their possession,
the CIA divert its route.
They've commandeered a
private salvage yard for the night
that's fenced off from prying eyes.
So while the kgb are having a party,
the American engineers
have the opportunity
to get their hands on modern technology
that's devised by the Russians.
They only have until dawn
to learn everything they can
about the Soviet space ship.
The men take their shoes
off so they don't leave
any kind of debris and
they get right inside.
They start taking it apart bolt by bolt.
Photographing everything.
It was a chance for them
to steal as much information
as they needed to boost
the American space program.
But there's a huge problem.
The Soviets have
placed a tamper-proof seal
inside some of the most important parts.
In order to photograph it,
they're going to have to break this seal.
The Russians are going to know
that they were inside the Luna.
The operatives have no
choice but to pull in a favor.
So what they do
is get a local forger
to remake it overnight.
The forger must turn around
an exact copy of the seal
in a few hours.
By daybreak, the Luna
is back in one piece.
The Soviet guards roll out of the party
nursing these killer
hangovers with no clue
that their prize exhibit has
spent the night with the enemy.
It's incredible to think that
this whole thing worked.
The Luna continues its global tour,
with the Soviets none the wiser.
The question is
did the heist advance
america's space program?
According to CIA documents
declassified in 1994
The answer is yes.
The Americans used the intel
to calculate the weight of the spacecraft
and from that, they can
work out the size and weight
of the missile the Soviets
are using to launch it.
It's just the kind of detailed intelligence
the Americans need to
blast ahead in the space race.
And on August 10th,
they launch a corona spy satellite
that orbits 17 times around the earth.
The superpower space
race becomes a sprint
to land a man on the lunar surface.
But both nations have
other plans for the moon
that are so shocking they
remain secret for 40 years.
Throughout the 1950s and '60s,
we lived under constant
fear of a nuclear attack.
You are, every day,
being fed a steady diet of
you need to be terrified
that the world's going to end next week.
There are a lot of outrageous headlines
during this time period.
The one that caught the attention
of the American public the most was
"They'll bomb the moon."
It's a headline that just looks like
it came straight out of a comic book.
The news has the
white house in a panic.
Are the Russians really
going to go through with this,
or is it just a wild rumor?
For the American military, this is no joke.
It responds in 1958 by
launching secret project a119.
The U.S. air force calls upon
12 of the country's leading
astrophysicists to take part in
a highly sensitive assignment.
The team includes a young
graduate named Carl sagan,
in the days before he was a
world-renowned astronomer.
The plan is simple.
If the Russians really are planning
to hit the moon with a nuclear
weapon, then guess what?
America needs to
beat them to the punch.
One side is planning something insane,
the other side has to match it.
But the U.S. has a challenge.
There's no point in nuking
the moon if no one can see it.
The moon has no atmosphere.
That blast will not produce
the iconic mushroom cloud
that we expect from a nuclear explosion.
They come up with a solution.
Detonate the bomb along
the moon's Terminator line,
the border between where
the shadow meets the light.
So that bright flash
of light will be visible
to the naked eye and
the resulting cloud of dust
and debris that's kicked
up by the nuclear weapon
is going to be illuminated by the sun.
With a key problem solved,
the American team is ready
in the event the president says go.
In 1958, in perhaps
the most surreal contest
of the space race, American
and Soviet scientists
compete to hit the moon
with a nuclear bomb.
The question is
will either side blow up
the earth in the process?
If the nuclear payload is
too heavy for the rocket,
the rocket could fall back to
earth and the bomb detonates.
The big event suddenly becomes
a tragedy on a massive scale
and possibly the start of a nuclear war.
But the risk of apocalypse isn't enough
to make the U.S. pull the plug.
The team puts forward this plan
to use a w25 warhead,
which is a smaller device,
but crucially, it will still
be visible from earth.
Problem solved. All
systems are ready to go.
The science works.
Are they actually going to do this?
At the last minute,
there's one more concern
that throws plans into a tailspin.
The nuclear fallout could contaminate
the moon's surface for years.
Which means nobody can go up there.
And that's a big problem
because landing a man
on the moon is looking
more and more scientifically possible.
The U.S. realizes that
stepping on the moon
is a bigger win than blowing it up.
In January 1959,
project a119 is canceled.
And the Soviets also
come to their senses.
That doesn't mean
the space race is over.
The next goal?
Be the first to set up a
permanent base on the moon.
It won't be easy, but in
1959, the U.S. military
launches project horizon
to accomplish the goal.
The moon is an extremely
hostile environment.
The temperature range is huge.
In the sunlight, it can reach
up to 225 degrees fahrenheit,
while in the dark, it
can drop to minus 243.
Plus, the thin atmosphere means
that there is no protection
from cosmic radiation
and there's no protection
from meteorites.
So the safest place is
beneath the lunar surface.
This moon base is planned to consist
of an underground network of tubes.
And they serve as living quarters,
storage, lab space, and the entire facility
will be powered by nuclear reactors.
The move itself will
be a massive operation.
The proposal calls for
about 147 saturn launches
to get not only the
materials up to the moon,
but also the things that will
become the space station
and the crew themselves.
This will take ten years
to do and cost $6 billion.
In today's money, that's $64 billion.
$64 billion.
Why would the government
consider spending an
unthinkable sum of money
building an outpost on the moon?
Classified documents released in 2014
provide the answer.
The Americans know that
the Soviets intend to build
their own moon base,
and they do not want to be
neighbors with these guys.
The Soviets have the
momentum in this space race,
and there's a sense that
the moon is up for grabs,
and they want to claim it.
The Soviet initiative is called zvezda,
which translates as star.
The Soviet designs are
very similar to project horizon.
But there's a little bit more
emphasis on comforts.
They put in video screens
displaying Russian vistas
to comfort homesick cosmonauts.
The Soviets build a prototype
and they stick a group
of cosmonauts in it
for a year as a simulation.
But the U.S. is planning
more than a lunar land grab.
The true purpose of project horizon
is to turn the moon into
an American fortress.
The first one to colonize the moon
could also be the first
one to weaponize it.
The moon's distance from the earth
makes an outpost difficult
to attack and easy to defend.
They even have plans for
armed combat on the moon.
I'm talking about astronauts
armed with weapons
on the surface of the
moon shooting it out.
During the cold war, it was
a competition to dream up
what's the worst thing
that our enemy can do
and how can we counter it?
And it just led to doing crazy things
or planning crazy things.
Fortunately, lunar
combat never breaks out.
In 1959, project horizon is shelved
by a newly-formed agency,
the dream of militarization of the moon
is over, at least for now.
It's 1960, and as the
contest for space continues,
the Soviets want to
land a knockout punch.
They build a rocket
powered by a new kind of fuel
called devil's venom.
It will end in tragedy.
In October of 1960, an
American news story breaks
about a Soviet rocket engineer's death.
Mitrofan nedelin is a highly decorated
military commander and he's
known as the chief of rockets.
According to the Soviet press release,
he died the previous
day in an air accident.
As Russia mourns an important leader,
the CIA investigates his death.
But it finds no record
of a Soviet air crash.
And the secret report
is full of suspicious gaps.
According to the report,
something catastrophic happened.
70 coffins have been delivered
to a Russian space center.
It's clear the Soviet space program
has experienced a disaster.
But what kind?
Rumors start bouncing
around about nedelin's death.
Some say that it was an air crash.
Some say that it was a fatal explosion.
The one thing that
everyone can agree on
is that it happened in
southern Kazakhstan,
the location of the Soviets'
biggest missile launch site.
The events remain a
mystery for 39 years.
Then a former space officer
decides it's finally safe to come clean.
At the Russian cosmodrome,
chief nedelin is developing
a top-secret new missile, the r-16.
Now, it's a space rocket,
but its purpose has nothing
to do with space exploration.
The r-16 is basically a super weapon.
It's actually an intercontinental
ballistic missile designed
to hit long-range targets.
The weapon enters space,
then falls back to earth
to strike its targets.
It has a range of almost 7,000 miles,
carrying a 5-to 6-megaton
nuclear warhead.
This could decimate the
United States from Russia.
The Soviet union wants
to launch this missile
for the first time on the 43rd anniversary
of the Russian revolution.
It's all symbolism, but the Soviets wanted
to send shock waves about
Russian power around the world
with this new weapon.
It's never been tested
and nedelin is under
increasing pressure to launch it.
Nedelin has hundreds of engineers
working at this ferocious
pace to meet this deadline.
It's a dangerous environment.
The r-16 requires a highly volatile fuel
that's known as devil's venom.
It's so corrosive that
as soon as you put it in the fuel tanks,
it starts to literally
eat away at the rocket.
As the test date approaches,
there are problems with the rocket,
but Soviet scientists
don't want to admit failure.
They want to hit this deadline,
so they keep pressing forward.
On the morning of the
test, the 100-foot-high r-16
is fueled with devil's
venom, ready for launch.
Things start to go wrong right away.
Part of the electrics short-circuit.
Chief nedelin and his staff
are supposed to leave the launch area.
They're just milling around
the launch pad and the missile,
violating every safety protocol,
and the missile begins to spit out sparks
and then it begins to
spit out devil's venom.
What happens next is captured on film,
but the shocking images
are suppressed for 30 years.
The electrical issue sparks the fuel,
which bursts the fuel tanks
and triggers this
earth-shattering explosion.
Anyone near the rocket
was killed instantly.
Anyone else had to try to escape
this mass of flames and toxic gas.
But they were all trapped in
the area by a security fence.
Some workers burned to death.
Others died from inhaling fumes.
It was an absolute disaster.
Chief nedelin, along with
many important engineers,
are killed.
It's a horrific failure.
In the aftermath, survivors
and relatives of the dead
are ordered to describe
the tragedy as a plane crash.
It's one of the many fatal
accidents that affected
the space program, covered
up by the government.
The exact number of
people who lost their lives
while working on the
Soviet space program
remains unknown to this day.
For six years, the U.S.
and the Soviet union
invest billions on deep
space competition.
Then, in 1963, the U.S.
seems to change tack.
The air force announces
the first-ever space lab.
Called the manned orbiting laboratory,
or mol, it will be launched
to benefit all humanity.
The U.S. develop and
test a two-man operated
scientific research station.
It's designed to remain in orbit
150 miles above the earth's surface,
is 60 feet long, with a
laboratory and a living space.
A program designed to evaluate
man's performance in space
over extended periods of time.
The design team comes up
with incredible innovations.
They develop the next generation
of flexible space suits.
The laboratory simulator becomes part
of NASA's future projects,
as does the mol's
waste generation system.
The individuals who trained on the mol
all later went on to be the pioneers
who manned some of the
early space shuttle missions.
The project's greatest
technical breakthrough
is its own giant camera.
The camera is the size of a car.
It uses an external mirror
that is as tall as a man.
It is described as the perfect tool
for conducting scientific studies of earth.
Things like tracking
tectonic plates or air pollution
or studying the polar caps.
All to benefit humankind.
The benefits seem endless.
In November 1966,
the first prototype is
ready for test launch.
All launch commit lights are green.
T-minus 10 seconds.
The mol enters orbit
and remains in contact
with the earth for 30 days.
It's a huge success.
But behind all the excitement
hides a stunning secret.
In 2015, the military
declassifies documents that
expose the science project
as an elaborate cover story.
The real intent of the camera,
to spy on the Russians.
Since 1960, the American military
has been monitoring
Russia's nuclear capabilities
from surveillance satellites.
Photographs from space
of value to strategic intelligence
completely revolutionized
the intelligence process.
After the cameras take the pictures,
the film needs to be
processed back on earth.
By that point, it could
be too late to react.
What good is intel on an enemy attack
if it arrives too late to respond?
One solution is a spy camera
operated by astronauts.
The crew on the mol could
actually direct the camera
at exactly what they
wanted to take a picture of.
They can report what they are looking at,
and then the crew back on earth
knows exactly what
photos they'll be getting.
From its orbit between 150 to 170 miles,
it can resolve places and
objects 9,000 feet across.
That's easily big enough to get detail
from military installations
and other really important sites
that the United States is trying to spy on.
The camera works, but at a huge price.
The mol costs a whopping $13 billion.
It was too expensive, and
the evolution of technology
was making modern day
satellites better equipped
to carry out the same operation
that the mol was supposed to carry out.
The mol is mothballed
after just one flight.
But there is one more twist in this tale.
The cover story that the
mol will make discoveries
for the benefit of the
planet ultimately comes true.
Technology from the mol
would be used in "sky lab,"
america's first space station.
Launched in may 1973,
it proves humans can live
in space for weeks at a time.
The space race was never just about
getting a man on the moon.
It was about fighting wars on earth.
In 1966, the Soviets test a
weapon of mass destruction
that can dodge america's
early warning system
by using the physics of space.
By 1961, the U.S. is protecting itself
by building a network of giant radars
that can detect incoming
weapons launched from Russia.
If the Soviets are going
to attack the United States
via missile launches, they're going to fly
those missiles on the most direct route,
and that's over the north pole.
The radar system gives
the U.S. a big advantage.
It has time to respond.
It would give them 20 minutes.
20 minutes doesn't sound like much,
but that would be enough for us
to get a retaliatory strike underway.
For the Soviets, this warning
system poses a big problem.
They no longer have the capability
to unleash a secret, decisive attack.
Now the Soviets need to
find a new way to attack.
If they could launch an
attack from someplace else,
the Americans would
not be able to detect them
and we won't be prepared for it,
and so they come up
with this brilliant idea.
The Soviets have already
launched satellites into space.
Why not do the same
with a nuclear bomb?
And it's called the
fractional orbital bombardment system.
The idea is simple and terrifying.
The missile enters
orbit, circles the planet,
and can be directed to strike
in any direction at any time.
The way the system works
is it's launched into orbit,
and then it just waits.
Once the signal is given to attack
It leaves orbit, enters
earth's atmosphere,
and then it releases its warheads.
And what's so deadly is that
they're very close to the target.
It could drop a nuclear
weapon on us at any point.
And in this way, the Soviet union would
win the chess game and get checkmate.
That is terrifying.
At first, the Soviets need
to test to see if it works.
In the bleak midwinter
in the Kazakhstan desert,
the Soviets launched
their brand-new missile.
It's programmed to land
4,000 miles away in kamchatka.
To avoid destroying northeast Russia,
the tests are conducted
without a warhead.
The fobs tests begin to
go wrong immediately.
The missiles go off target,
they break apart in the air,
they rain down on parts of the earth.
The embarrassing setbacks threatened
to derail the project.
The mechanics of rerouting the missile
into its attack position
are difficult to perfect.
But the Soviets keep pushing
and the missile improves
with each launch.
In the summer of 1967,
American spies deliver
a highly classified report
with news the Pentagon
has been dreading.
The secret orbital missile actually works.
The successful tests
travel across the south pole,
but most importantly,
they dodge those arctic radar systems.
The test is non-nuclear,
but it provides a powerful
proof of concept that they can do it.
And if they decide to do it,
what they're going to
swing toward the earth
is a 5-megaton
strategic nuclear weapon.
5 megatons is not going to look pretty
if it's directed at southern California.
In November 1967, the
Soviets unveil their new missile
at a red square parade,
announcing they can deliver a
nuke to anywhere in the world.
Their secret weapon
is no longer a secret.
The Soviets have created
something so frightening
that the UN steps in.
In 1967, both superpowers
signed the outer space treaty,
which prohibits the placement
of nuclear weapons in orbit.
But that doesn't stop the Soviets
finding new opportunities,
like arming a space
station with a secret Cannon.
The Soviet military is in
the middle of developing
a space station, the almaz,
and they want it in orbit
as soon as possible.
But NASA is ahead of the
game with the imminent launch
of their "sky lab" space station.
You've got Russian space stations,
American space stations.
What happens if they eventually meet?
And then if they meet,
what happens if that
contact is not friendly?
The Soviets don't take any chances.
They set up a highly
classified military project
to prepare for enemy attacks in space
by arming the "almaz 2" space station
with a fully-functioning space Cannon.
They approach a
Soviet weapons designer
to create a gun that can fire in space.
Normal artillery is really heavy.
And weight is at a
premium in space flight,
so they needed something a lot lighter.
The Soviet space engineers
decide to adapt an
autocannon, the rikhter r-23.
It's the fastest firing
single-barrel Cannon
ever used by the Soviet air force,
dispatching 2,500 rounds per minute.
The r-23 was designed
for the first Soviet supersonic bomber,
so it's already compact and lightweight.
It's also brutally effective.
You've got 23-millimeter rounds that are
punching these holes from a mile away.
So if it can do that on earth,
it's going to do enough
to cause serious damage
to any American space
station that tries to approach.
But fitting a gun to a spaceship
is a little different from
fitting one to a plane.
On a plane, you have a rotating turret,
and the gun can be
turned to follow the target
and to shoot it down from any angle.
But the engineers can't
figure a way to achieve this
in a space vehicle.
The Cannon has to be fixed
in place, so for the
operator to line up the target,
they'd have to pivot
the entire space station,
which is a big problem if
the target is moving at speed.
And there's another challenge.
When the Cannon
fires It's going to recoil.
And that's a huge problem in space.
When it's fired in zero gravity,
the recoil could inadvertently
force the orbiting space
station well off course.
There's only one way to be sure.
In 1974, the Soviets
conduct a secret live test.
The Soviets launch an
almaz that has a gun on it.
The crew spends about
three weeks in orbit
running various tests,
and then they go home
because the Soviets don't
want to have a crew on board
in case the test of this
gun goes badly wrong.
The crew's off the vessel,
but the space station is still in orbit.
It's time to test the Cannon.
Officials on the ground fire
the gun by remote control.
They shoot it once.
They shoot it twice.
They shoot it three times.
It's the first time a gun has
ever been fired in space.
But firing a gun in space
has unexpected downsides.
If you miss your target,
that bullet would have so much
energy and momentum behind it
that it would potentially keep going.
There could still be Russian
bullets orbiting the earth.
The test is never repeated
and the gun is decommissioned
and stored secretly for 40 years.
It's a weapon that many people
didn't even believe existed.
Then in 2015, a Russian TV show
visits a private military collection
and the almaz space Cannon
is finally revealed to the world.
In 1983, a final showdown
of the space race begins
when Ronald Reagan announces a plan
to put laser guns in space.
It's called the strategic
defense initiative.
Most people know it as star wars,
and Russia strikes back
with a plan of its own.
My fellow Americans,
thank you for sharing
your time with me tonight.
Tonight, we're launching an
effort which holds the promise
of changing the course of human history.
Ronald Reagan makes
this announcement
that shocks the world.
He's launching a
strategic defense initiative.
The plan is to launch
a network of satellites
armed with defensive lasers,
lasers that can shoot
down Russian missiles.
If a laser could shoot down a missile
before it ever reached the homeland,
it would make all nuclear weapons
Impotent and obsolete.
The program requires
radical new technology
that doesn't even exist yet.
Critics around the
world started to see this
as a science fiction tale.
So Reagan's program
started to be called
the star wars program.
The western media poked fun.
But the reaction in
Moscow is deadly serious.
When the Soviets found
out about Reagan's plan
to put a laser in space,
they see it totally different.
What they see is a chance
for the Americans to launch
nuclear weapons against Russia,
but then the laser would incapacitate
only Russian nuclear
warheads in response.
They see it as a
one-sided threat that doesn't
nullify the nuclear arms
race, but instead intensifies it.
So they go about
creating their own platform.
If america is planning star wars,
then the Soviets must find an answer.
They set up a secret project
to build a space battle
station armed with lasers.
Within a year of Reagan's
"star wars" speech,
Soviet scientists are commissioned
to provide a laser capable of
destroying American satellites.
This 1 million-watt
laser is the first weapon
on their planned orbital
weapons platform,
essentially a space station
that is armed with
cutting-edge weaponry.
It's a radical new technology.
No one has put a laser in space before.
The mysterious weapon
is called "polyus skif,"
which roughly translates
to north pole barbarian.
Whatever the name, it's a killer.
The "polyus skif" is massive.
It's two tractor trailers
long and weighs 80 tons.
It requires a huge rocket to launch it.
The Soviet space laser is way ahead
of Reagan's star wars,
and it's a potential game-changer.
Some call it a Battlestar
that will weaponize space.
They've essentially created a death star.
A real death star.
In 1987, it's ready
to be launched into orbit and tested.
But there's been a change at the kremlin.
The Soviet union has a new leader
who's looking to slow
down the space race.
Mikhail gorbachev has
publicly proposed an end
to the development of space weapons.
Because he's promising
to reduce the cold war,
the development of a space-based laser
is going to blow a hole in peace talks.
But gorbachev doesn't
want to pull the plug
on "polyus" quite yet.
The Soviet union has already
sunk a lot of money into this,
so the launch is going to go ahead.
But he orders them to
not test the laser in space.
It's not a good look.
On launch day,
gorbachev's so concerned
about western reaction to the
laser that he bans any photos.
All the journalists and photographers
could only stand on the
opposite side of the rocket.
That was gorbachev's solution
to making sure that history
only told the tale of what they could see,
which was a clean
rocket going into space,
when in fact, there
was a covert death ray
on the other side of the rocket
that was trying to be hidden.
- The launch goes ahead
- As discreetly as possible.
The day that the "polyus" is
set to launch, it's a big day.
The officials are out there.
The launch proceeds.
And it's looking good initially.
But then
Something goes terribly
wrong, spins out of control,
plunges back to earth,
burning up in the atmosphere.
Everything is lost.
It's a complete disaster.
In the end, both programs failed.
Reagan ran out of funding
for his star wars program,
and the idea of space-based lasers
still remains a thing of science fiction.
But the question is for how long?
In 1991, the collapse of the Soviet union
puts an end to the cold
war phase of the space race.
But the contest to control
deep space is far from over.
New players from SpaceX in america
to China, India, and Japan
are looking to the moon.
And beyond.
From covert plans to nuke the moon
to tragic attempts to cover
up shocking disasters,
competition in deep space
will continue to inspire strange,
terrible and sometimes
inspiring missions.
I'm David duchovny.
Thanks for watching
"secrets declassified."