Netflix has begun the countdown to a "re-launch" of one of NASA's most well-known and suspenseful episodes in spaceflight history.
The streaming service has scheduled Sept. 5 as the debut of "Apollo 13: Survival," a new documentary from the British production company Insight Film. Netflix released a trailer a month before the film's on-demand premiere.
"Using original footage and interviews, this documentary tells the nail-biting story of Apollo 13 and the struggle to bring the astronauts safely home," reads Netflix's brief synopsis for the 96-minute program.
Launched in April 1970, Apollo 13 was planned to be the third mission to land humans on the moon. Instead, an in-flight emergency — an explosion that tore through the spacecraft's service module, leaving it venting the mission's limited supply of oxygen into space — changed the focus of the flight. The lunar module was no longer a lander, but a lifeboat needed to bring crew members James Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert safely home.
"What unfolded over the next four days was a rescue mission like no other; a knife-edge, life-or-death drama, broadcast in real-time to the watching world," read Insight Films' summary of the film.
