IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Photos and text from wire services of our planet,” she said. “With all of its extraordinary exploring and breakthroughs in the universe, we have yet to find another planet like Earth.”

The discoveries about changes to the Earth because of climate change are outlined in a non-combative way in Kennedy’s film. She didn’t want to risk alienating the audience by diving too deeply into a political fight on the issue. These politics, she believes, plays a role in NASA having only a fraction of the federal funding that it had during its 1960s heyday.

“My intention was not to make this a climate change film, and I think it’s ultimately a film about NASA,” she said. “But the same scientists who are hanging off the space station and doing space walks and building (the) Hubble (telescope) are the same scientists who are saying this is an urgent matter.”

The film touches upon NASA’s failures, like the explosions of Challenger and Columbia and sending up a space telescope that initially delivered blurry pictures, but it’s mostly an admiring look at the agency.

“Above and Beyond” shows prototypes of vehicles that would be used for a potential mission to Mars. Kennedy said she’s not sure when or whether NASA would be able to accomplish that. One difficulty is the short length of political administrations making it difficult to build the political will for such projects — like was done in the 1960s.

DISCOVERY CHANNEL VIA AP This image released by Discovery Channel shows filmmaker Rory Kennedy during the filming of her new documentary, “Above and Beyond: NASA’s Journey to Tomorrow.”