The Space Explorers

[1] The cartoon, which featured Jimmy, Smitty and Professor Leon Nordheim on board the Polaris spaceship, taught space-related concepts.

[1] They were made under the technical guidance of Franklyn M. Branley, Associate Astronomer, American Museum of Natural History-Hayden Planetarium.

[citation needed] The spaceship from the series, the Polaris, has been featured on the very beginning of Chapter 5 of NOVA's Public Television (PBS) production of The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory.

[3] Telepolis journalist Marcus Hammerschmitt called The Space Explorers an instant hit, and concluded that the climate in late-1950s America must have been favorable for its reception.

Hammerschmitt also saw a parallel between the incorporation of film material produced in Nazi Germany into an American piece of media and the careers of some rocket engineers from the German Peenemünde facility who successfully continued to work at NASA.