The Greatest Shot in the History of Television

I have long loved this clip of BBC science broadcaster James Burke reporting live from NASA during the 1977 launch of Voyager 2 on a Titan IIIE/Centaur rocket. Every so often, it reappears on social media and reminds people just how extraordinary great science broadcasting can be.

The clip originally appeared in Connections, Burke’s remarkable 1970s BBC series exploring the hidden relationships between science, technology, history and society. Nearly fifty years later, it still feels strikingly modern.

Part of what makes Connections so enduring is its intellectual architecture: the idea that science and technology do not develop in isolation, but through systems, institutions, infrastructures, contingencies and long chains of social and technical change. That way of thinking feels highly relevant today, as we try to understand how digital technologies, artificial intelligence and public institutions are reshaping one another.

It is often described as “the greatest shot in the history of television”. That may or may not be true — but it is certainly one of the great moments of live science broadcasting. The timing is remarkable, of course. But what makes the clip endure is Burke himself: calm, precise, technically fluent, and able to explain an extraordinarily complex engineering and scientific achievement with clarity and confidence in real time (and one take).

At a time when we are once again thinking seriously about expertise, evidence, trust, technological change, and public understanding, it feels like an especially powerful example of what great science communication can look like. There is no hype, no theatricality, no unnecessary oversimplification — just careful explanation, intellectual curiosity, and genuine public service broadcasting.

It is also a reminder of the remarkable role public service broadcasting has played in shaping public understanding of science and technology over many decades, through programmes such as Tomorrow’s World, which Burke also presented.

The clip is only a few minutes long, but it captures something important about the relationship between technology, institutions, media, and public imagination.

The BBC Archive has also shared a shorter version of the clip here. Episodes of Connections can also be watched online via the Internet Archive.