Return to Space

Return to Space is a documentary about SpaceX's rise and Elon Musk's long-running effort to restore American crewed spaceflight. Its focus is the May 2020 mission that carried NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley to the International Space Station aboard a Dragon capsule, the first crewed launch from American soil since the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011 and the first of its kind flown by a private company. The film follows the two veterans and their families through preparations for the flight, alongside the engineers and flight controllers working behind the scenes, and traces the years of test flights, setbacks and redesigns that preceded the launch.

Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin directed, with Vasarhelyi, Chin and Kyle Schember producing. It is their third documentary together, following Free Solo and The Rescue, and it arrives before their later narrative and documentary work. The cast is made up of participants playing themselves, among them Musk, Hurley, Behnken, then-NASA administrator James Bridenstine, Tim Dodd and Hans-Jörg Koenigsmann.

On IMDb the film holds a 7.3 rating from roughly 6,100 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.5 from about 673 votes. A critics' rating of 6.7 from 19 reviews places it slightly above the audience score on TMDB and close to the IMDb figure, suggesting a reasonably favourable but not unanimous reception.