(Credit: Netflix)

Space is that one thing every single person pretends to understand, but none of us actually does. Not even the biggest space scientists, because sure, they might know more than us, but there is still a lot more to discover. The universe is out there doing whatever it wants, like throwing storms at the sun and hiding secrets in places we cannot even point to, while we are here trying to pass exams, go through our boring jobs, and remember our passwords. It feels unfair, right?

That is why space documentaries come in handy. They take all that impossible stuff and make it feel like a story you can follow. Netflix has a few that pull you in without frying your brain. No complicated equations or a boring video with a “professor voice”. Just real people trying to figure out the biggest mysteries we have ever faced.

And while most of us might not get the chance in this lifetime to visit space, it’s these documentaries that satisfy our curiosity and help us become more curious about what’s out there.

So here are three documentaries that make space feel less like homework and more like an adventure you get to tag along for. If you want to understand how wild the universe actually is, but without feeling like you are trapped in a science class, start here.

Three must-watch space documentaries to stream on Netflix

Apollo 13: Survival (2024)

You know that moment in a video game when everything goes wrong at once, and you genuinely start thinking about the end? Now imagine that, but you are halfway to the moon. That is basically what happened to the astronauts on Apollo 13. The documentary follows Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise: three men who were supposed to be on a normal mission until an explosion turned their spacecraft into a disaster. Suddenly, nothing worked the way it was supposed to. They had almost no power, barely any oxygen, and a team on Earth scrambling to pull off a rescue using whatever they had left.

What makes this doc so chilling is how human the entire thing feels. You watch astronauts trying to stay calm when any tiny mistake could have ended everything. You see NASA engineers trying ideas that sounded ridiculous until they suddenly worked. And you realise that space is not just beautiful but also unpredictable.

Unknown: Cosmic Time Machine (2023)

Now imagine building a giant camera and think that the camera has to work perfectly in space. It has to survive anything you name it: fire, ice, radiation, the vacuum, and also never come home again. That is basically what NASA did with the James Webb Space Telescope. And the funniest part? Everyone was terrified it would break the second it reached orbit.

This documentary lets you watch the whole thing come together. And not the clips or the theoretical info but the science behind it, all the drama that happened, the last-second fixes, literally everything. Once the telescope finally reaches its spot and starts sending images back, you see these insane photos of galaxies and stars that existed long before humans even existed. The reactions from the scientists feel like kids seeing fireworks for the first time.

Black Holes | The Edge of All We Know (2021)

Black holes have always sounded like the kind of thing adults made up to scare children, but no… they are real, and they are much stranger than anything horror films could dream up. This documentary follows two groups trying to understand them: one trying to prove how black holes behave, and the other trying to actually photograph one using telescopes around the world.

The science in this doc is big, but the storytelling is very simple. You see people arguing, scribbling ideas, and panicking when things do not go the way they expected. Stephen Hawking is part of the story, too, and the way he explains the mystery feels surprisingly accessible. The best part is when the teams finally get close to capturing that blur of light that proves a black hole is really there. There is this rush, and not because you suddenly understand the universe, but because you watched regular humans chase something nobody had seen before.