NOVA SPACE WARS to Premiere on PBS

The award-winning PBS science series NOVA, a production of GBH, announced the documentary special 'SPACE WARS' will premiere Wednesday, October 7 at 9:00 pm ET/8c on PBS (check local listings) and stream at pbs.org/nova, NOVA on YouTube, and the PBS App. The film explores a high-stakes conflict silently escalating in Earth orbit, as global military powers race to weaponize this domain. Just last week, the US government acknowledged for the first time that it now has weapons in space.

Space has always represented humanity's reach beyond itself, but it has quietly become a battleground. SPACE WARS follows the technology and strategy behind a rapidly developing arms race, as nations compete for dominance over the orbits that carry the satellites modern life depends on. These satellites guide navigation, power communication, and support economies worldwide. They are also more exposed than most people realize, vulnerable both to deliberate attack from adversaries and to the debris now crowding an increasingly congested orbital environment, where even a fragment traveling at 17,000 miles per hour can destroy a spacecraft in an instant.

'The essential importance of satellites orbiting the Earth to our modern society is matched only by the absolute vulnerability of all that hardware,' says NOVA Co-Executive Producer Chris Schmidt. 'The simple fact is that there's no hiding place in space. And if a major conflict breaks out over our heads we could lose everything from navigation to communication to the stability of the entire global financial system before anyone fires a shot on Earth.'

The film raises a question that has unsettled experts watching this arms race unfold: What if the first battle in space has already happened, and no one outside a small circle of insiders knows it? SPACE WARS brings viewers inside the strategy rooms and research labs where military planners, engineers, and policy experts are wrestling with a conflict that plays out far above the reach of most cameras and most headlines, and asks what can still be done to protect the infrastructure the entire planet has come to rely on.

'SPACE WARS demonstrates that war in space is no longer just science fiction,' said director Peter Yost. 'Thousands of satellites, including some with weapons, now hang over our heads like the proverbial Sword of Damocles. The film offers a glimpse of what has long been invisible and enables citizens to (literally) look up and learn about this new global reality.'

Featuring insights from many experts including Jonathan McDowell, astrophysicist, space sustainability analyst, and spaceflight historian; John Shaw, retired 3-star lieutenant general and former Deputy Commander, U.S. Space Command; Kevin Chilton, retired 4-star general and former commander of space shuttle Atlantis; Patrick Binning, Space Systems Engineering instructor at Johns Hopkins University; Chirag Parikh, former Executive Secretary of the National Space Council, and more, SPACE WARS traces how a domain long viewed as a realm of cooperation and discovery gave way to competition and threat, and what it will take to keep the war above us from reaching the ground.

SPACE WARS is a NOVA Production by Pangloss Films for GBH. Written, Produced, and Directed by Peter Yost. Produced by Edna Alburquerque. Edited by Don Kleszy. Executive Producers for NOVA are Julia Cort and Chris Schmidt. NOVA is a production of GBH.

Major funding for Space Wars is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, formerly the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Funding for NOVA and this program is provided by Carlisle Companies, Viking Cruises, the NOVA Science Trust with major support from the Estate of John 'Jack' Baer and additional support from Margaret and Will Hearst and the Hoveida Family Foundation, and by PBS viewers.