After Germany’s surrender, ending the European hostilities in World War II, American military forces embark on a program to recruit captured German scientists, particularly those involved in the development of rockets and missiles, to perform further research and development in these areas for the United States, especially with the Pacific war between the United States and Japan still very much an active concern. The German scientists are also interrogated to find out if any of their technology has been shared with Japan. Numerous German rocket scientists, notably Wernher von Braun and Eberhard Rees, are identified as possible assets to the American war effort despite their past affiliations with Germany’s Nazi regime.
The fourth episode of the British science fiction series The Andromeda Breakthrough, created and written by John Elliot and astronomer Fred Hoyle as a follow-up to 1961’s A For Andromeda, is broadcast on the BBC, starring Peter Halliday, Susan Hampshire, John Hollis (The Empire Strikes Back), and Mary Morris. Unlike A For Andromeda, this series exists in the BBC archives in its entirety.
Filming begins on a nearly-unprecedented second pilot episode of Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek at the request of NBC, which saw promise (but not enough action) in The Cage. When Jeffrey Hunter declines to return to the role of Captain Christopher Pike, the character is renamed (Captain James R. Kirk) and recast (in the person of well-regarded Canadian actor William Shatner). The first edit of the new episode, 
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation airs the seventh and final episode of the science fiction series Vega 4, starring John Fassen (a veteran of ABC’s first genre series, The Stranger). This series will be followed up in 1970 by a sequel, Phoenix Five.
ITV airs 
ITV airs the fourth episode of P.J. Hammond’s science fiction series Sapphire & Steel, starring David McCallum and Joanna Lumley.
The 26th episode of Harold Jack Bloom’s sci-fi series Project UFO airs on NBC, portraying fictionalized investigations into what the show claims are actual cases from the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book investigations. Edward Winter and Caskey Swaim star. This is the final episode of the series to air, with ratings falling over the course of the second season. Project UFO is the last television series to be produced by Jack Webb’s Mark VII Productions prior to Webb’s death in 1982.
ITV airs the 49th episode of the anthology series Tales Of The Unexpected. Joanna Pettet guest stars.
ITV premieres the 
Fox airs the fourth episode of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures, starring Evan Richards, Christopher Kennedy, and Rick Overton. Hiro Kanagawa (Altered Carbon, Star Trek: Discovery) guest stars.
Cable channel TNT premieres 
Big Finish Productions 
The 115th episode of Stargate SG-1 airs on the Sci-Fi Channel, starring Richard Dean Anderson, Amanda Tapping, Christopher Judge, and Corin Nemec.
Pay cable channel Showtime premieres 
Big Finish Productions releases 
The 
Salvo releases the career-spanning 
Having already been donated to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in 1985, Space Shuttle Enterprise, a test vehicle not built to spaceflight specs, is removed from the custom-made hangar at the Smithsonian and prepared for re-gifting. With NASA donating the space-flown shuttle Discovery to the Smithsonian, Enterprise will now become a major display at New York City’s Intrepid Museum, based on the retired aircraft carrier U.S.S. Intrepid. For the first time in nearly 20 years, Enterprise is loaded onto one of the modified Boeing 747s from which it made its in-atmosphere test flights in 1977 and is transported to New York.
The United Arab Emirates launch their first uncrewed interplanetary mission, the Emirates Mars Mission, from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center atop a Japanese H-IIA rocket. Expected to arrive at Mars in February 2021, the Hope orbiter will study Martian weather from orbit, not only serving as a true weather satellite for the red planet, but also gathering data on the factors leading to Martian atmosphere loss. The project, initiated in 2014, is intended not only to study Mars, but to attempt to gather a base of talent that could eventually build an Arab space industry.
Universal Studios releases the