One gaint leap

Using original photographs from the golden era of space travel, a new book unveils NASA’s thrilling first spaceflights

Astronaut Jim Lovell died this month, aged 97, one of the last of the original pioneers of space exploration. He missed out on Nasa’s early Mercury missions but was selected for the Gemini programme,

(Photograph taken around 1960) Well, 1957 arrived and, having deliberately fluffed two 11-plus exams to avoid Bala Grammar School, I attended Corwen Secondary School. We were told that we were the fir

This October marks 50 years since a heavily shielded spacecraft, the Soviet Union’s Venera 9, parachuted into the atmosphere of Venus. Then, having landed, it did something extraordinary: it beamed ba

The commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission ...

Astronomers love a challenge. They place their observatories on the highest mountains, in the driest deserts, on the coldest ice shelves, beneath the deepest oceans, in orbit around Earth and the Sun,