NOVA

Across the Middle East lie thousands of enigmatic stone megastructures whose shape, when seen from the air, looks like giant kites. The oldest were built around 7,000 B.C., predating the earliest Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge by several thousand years. Since their discovery in the 1920s, these "desert kites" have posed a stubborn mystery: Who designed them, and why were they built? How did prehistoric people, before the invention of writing, draw detailed scale models without compasses, hot air balloons, or drones? Using cutting-edge technologies, an international team of archaeologists is determined to find answers and shed new light on the poorly understood Stone Age period of human history. 

In September 2024, Hurricane Helene dumped more than 14 inches of rain on North Carolina, triggering flash floods and mudslides, causing over $50 billion of damage, and killing more than 100 people. A shocked nation wondered how the city that bore the brunt of the destruction – Asheville, at 2,000 feet above sea level and more than 250 miles inland – could have suffered such a fate. With eyewitness testimony, dramatic unseen videos, drone flyovers, and 3D animations, NOVA pieces together a moment-by-moment account of the Asheville disaster. And it looks to other recent flash floods – including the devastating Fourth of July 2025 floods in the Texas Hill Country, and catastrophic flooding in Valencia, Spain – for lessons that might help prevent the next disaster. Are these violent floods becoming more frequent and ferocious? And what can communities do to protect themselves in the future?

The size of a football field, the International Space Station hurtles around Earth at 17,000 mph, shielding its astronauts from the most hostile environment humans have ever endured. To mark the 25th anniversary of the continuous human presence in space, astronauts and Mission Control insiders reveal the most terrifying moments aboard this remarkable orbiting laboratory, where a single mistake could prove fatal. From ammonia leaks, meteor strikes, and docking disasters, to spacewalk horrors, potentially lethal showers of space junk, and the moment the entire ISS backflipped out of control, NOVA uncovers tales of life and death at 1.3 million feet above our planet – and the human ingenuity and teamwork that each time saved the day.