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How JFK, LBJ and Nixon All Put Their Stamp on the Apollo 11 Moon Landing

A little before 11 pm on July 20, 1969, President Nixon sat in his small hideaway office in the Executive Office Building next to the White House. He’d put a lot into NASA’s mission to land on the moon, not the actual development—all of that was done before he took office—but in making sure that […]

When Apollo 10 Nearly Crashed Into the Moon

On May 22, 1969, almost four days and six hours after leaving the Earth, the crew of Apollo 10 was enjoying a delightfully uneventful mission. Rather, it was as uneventful as a mission to the moon could be. Commander Tom Stafford and Lunar Module Pilot Gene Cernan had just returned from their close pass by […]

How the Search for Little Green Men—or Any Life on Mars—Got Smarter

Humans have been captivated by Mars almost as long as we’ve been watching the night sky. The ancient Greeks and Romans watched nightly as a reddish dot moved among the stars, growing dimmer and brighter in a two‑year cycle. Each named it for the god of war; the Roman version, “Mars,” stuck. Renaissance astronomers became […]

What Caused the Challenger Disaster?

By January of 1986 America was already bored with spaceflight. It was, in part, NASA’s own fault. The government agency had debuted the space shuttle program five years earlier with an aggressive public‑relations message that the reusable vehicles would make access to space both affordable and routine. Projected frequency: more than 50 flights a year. […]