Space Episode

The story is mostly or totally terrestrially grounded; though there may be space travel, it's not a setting where going into space is a regular or easy task and likely none of the main characters has gone into space—until now. Maybe just one of them will go up as a means of putting them on a bus or maybe the whole cast goes up for an episode, but it happen only once or twice for the entire run of the story.

Compare In Space, which technically doesn't have to do with anything about space.

Examples of Space Episode include:

Literature

• In the book (but not the movie) Forrest Gump, Forrest briefly becomes an astronaut.

Film

• Moonraker is the space episode of the James Bond series.
• Abbott and Costello Go to Mars
• The Three Stooges in Orbit

Live-Action TV

• Howard on The Big Bang Theory is preparing to go on trip to the ISS.
• Larry on Numb3rs goes to the ISS for several months.
• In The Teaser to one episode of Get Smart Da Chief and Max have a quick meeting on the moon, saying that now that NASA has reached the moon they'll have to find another place to hold their top-secret meetings.

Comics

• Tintin once flew to the moon.
• An early Bloom County arc had Ma and Pa Bloom stumble into a NASA craft while trying to get to Disney World.

Video Games

• Final Fantasy VIII has several of the characters briefly travel to a space station.
• Both No One Lives Forever games had space station levels.
• The Red Alert 2 expansion pack Yuri's Revenge featured a mission on the moon.
• In the iOS game Highborn, the last mission of chapter 2 takes place on the moon.
• The mission "Zero Gravity" in Ace Combat 3 Electrosphere marks the single time in the entire series that the player was allowed out of the atmosphere.
• Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2
• Angry Birds Space: Exactly What It Says on the Tin

Web Comics

• Hannelore in Questionable Content lived her early years on a space station with her supergenius father, but for Marigold and Marten her invitation is their first and possibly only time.
• In Kevin and Kell there was an early arc where Lindesfarne (and Rudy who stowed away) go to the ISS.

Western Animation

• Phineas and Ferb have gone into space at least twice. Both episodes were twice as long as usual.
• One episode of The Simpsons has Homer and Barney both selected for astronaut training. Homer is ultimately sent into space (and makes the mission fail, of course).
• Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers go into space in one episode to save an endangered crew of astronauts.
• Both "Starvin' Marvin in Space" and "Cancelled" of South Park involve the main characters going to extra terrestrial worlds.

Stan: My God, do you guys realize? This is only the second time we've ever been in outer space. Kyle: Yeah. Kenny: Awesome. Cartman: This is like my fifth time.

• The Cars Toons "UFM: Unidentified Flying Mater" and "Moon Mater."