African American civil rights activists in Huntsville, Alabama formed a “psychological warfare committee” to outsmart white supremacists and force the Rocket City to desegregate.
Thousands of women began their careers at NASA as computers, before the advent of electronic machines. A diverse and potent force in space exploration, their calculations were ultimately responsible for sending astronauts to the moon.
Wernher von Braun led NASA'S development of the Saturn V rocket that took Apollo 11 to the Moon. His Nazi record was not widely known until after his death.
In the summer of 1973 an anonymous band of women at NASA's Johnson Space Center made a mockery of the beauty contest planned by the agency for its Houston staff.
Read an excerpt from Chasing the Moon: The People, the Politics, and the Promise that Launched America into the Space Program, by Robert Stone and Alan Andres, out June 4, 2019 from Ballantine Books.
