Since its inception in 1979, Nickelodeon has been forward thinking with its programming. Yet it took over 41 years for the network to go after the final frontier, a live action space travel show for kids. To make an ambitious show like that happen, they needed the right co-pilot, landing the director of Apollo 13, Ron Howard.

Howard serves as executive producer for The Astronauts, a new live-action kids series coming to Nickelodeon on Nov. 13. It’s the first kids series to come from Howard and Brian Grazer’s production company, Imagine Entertainment, which launched a new division in 2019 called Imagine Kids+Family, headed up by Stephanie Sperber. In early meetings between the network and production company, the prospect of doing a space show for kids was exciting to both parties.

“They said, ‘We don’t know quite how to do it, but maybe you guys do because you seem to like space,...