The Soviet Union's Sputnik satellite launch in 1957 was one of the earliest big stories for television news, then growing rapidly in popularity and influence. With the framing of the Sputnik story as an affront to American superiority and a military threat, the U.S. government justified a strong response: a program to beat the Soviets to space. Unfortunately, several of the earliest uncrewed U.S. test rockets crashed, further heightening the crisis atmosphere as each major attempt was anxiously reported on the 15-minute national evening newscasts.

     Eventually, American satellites were launched successfully, and in 1959 seven military pilots were chosen for the astronaut corps. Television, egged on by the print press, elevated the astronauts to hero status, as celebrated as Hollywood's leading stars. Publicists from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the new civilian space agency, worked to fuel that perception. They schooled the seven in on­-camera behavior and prohibited military uniforms, to the astronaut's discomfort but to the benefit of the program's all-civilian image.

     Immediately after the flight of Alan Shepard in May 1961 (following the flight of Soviet  cosmonaut Gagarin), Vice President Lyndon Johnson, with  the heads of the NASA and the Defense Department, sent a report to President John F. Kennedy justifying the eventual $40 billion investment in a moon-landing program. From its inception, the crewed space program had at its core a propaganda objective: an American capture of the world's imagination. With Johnson's report as ammunition and the political goal of justifying massive government projects and fulfilling his vision of a "New Frontier," Kennedy went before Congress to challenge the nation to land a man on the moon before 19 70.

     The remaining five Mercury space flights (1961-63) and ten Gemini flights (1965-66) were covered virtually from launch to splashdown by adoring TV networks. Each mission promised new accomplishments, such as Ed White's first American spacewalk. For television  news,  it  was  a  welcome   reprieve  from  the 1960's morass of assassination, war, and inner-city unrest. However, by 1965 it was apparent to experts that the Soviets had no hope of putting someone on the moon, a fact that rarely entered the "space race" discourse, for this race was a boon to American industry.

     The ideal marriage of space and television was not merely the result of political and ideological agendas or of technical and logistical circumstance but of more resonant connections between the program and American cultural mythology. The space program was a Puritan narrative, with its crew-cut NASA technocrats tirelessly striving toward the moon (ironically, many of these were recruits from defunct aerospace programs in Germany, Canada, and other nations), and a western narrative, with lone heroes conquering a formidable new frontier (from mostly western U.S. facilities). And as the parallel narrative to the Vietnam War, it offered an image of a reassuringly benign yet powerful government while simultaneously reinforcing Cold War fears in demonstrating the awesome power of rockets.

     In 1967, three astronauts died in an early Apollo program test. The theme of astronaut as hero was tragically revived, and the public was reminded of the risks of conquering space. But the first of the Apollo flights (1968-72) were enormously successful, including the Christmas 1968 first lunar orbits by Apollo 8. The astronaut's reading from the Book of Genesis while in lunar orbit made for stirring television. In July 1969, the space-television narrative reached its climax, as the networks went on the air nearly full time to report the mission of Apollo 11, the first lunar landing; 528 million people around the world (but not in the Soviet Union) marveled at Apollo II on television.

     As with other Apollo missions providing TV coverage from the spacecraft, informal visits with the astronauts were highly scripted and made use of cue cards. Second moon walker Edwin Aldrin suggested that the United States Information Agency scripted Apollo B's Bible reading and Neil Armstrong's first words from the lunar surface. Whether Armstrong said "That's one small step for man" or whether he said "a man," as he intended (with the article "a" lost to static). has never been resolved. The blurry black-and-white images of Armstrong jumping onto the lunar surface and the short surface explorations by Armstrong and Aldrin are widely regarded as television's first and perhaps greatest example of unifying a massive worldwide audience in common wonder and hope.

     After the Apollo 11 television spectacular, coverage of the following moon missions became increasingly brief and critical. Under considerable pressure to begin cutting back, NASA eliminated the last three planned Apollo missions, terminating the program with Apollo 17 in 1972. NASA actually paid the networks to cover the last Apollo mission (NASA official Chris Kraft, Jr., quoted in Hurt, p. 282). Coverage was spectacular nonetheless, from the nail-biting return of the explosion-crippled Apollo 13 spacecraft to the lengthy moonwalks and moon buggy rides of the last Apollos, covered live with color cameras. Such a part of American culture was NASA of the 1960s that it routinely provided technical assistance and advice to Hollywood, as with the many permutations of Star Trek, or provided entire series storylines, as with I Dream of Jeanie. Footage from NASA's massive film library appears in all manner of productions. British News company ITN (Independent Television News) operates the largest television news archive in the world and reports that Apollo 11 moonwalk footage is the company's most-requested item.

     Television coverage of the long-duration Skylab missions (1973-74) provided entertaining images of astronaut antics in weightlessness but was overshadowed by the Watergate hearings. Watergate signaled an end of the trust of government and hero worship characterizing the 1960s space program. NASA could no longer sell its heroes and expensive programs to the public. The heroism of ex-astronauts was often dismantled by the same media that had constructed it, as astronauts were exposed for shady business deals or personal dysfunction, criticized for making commercials, or doubted in new corporate and political roles.

     Interest in space exploration was occasionally revived in the 1970s by spectacular accomplishments. In 1976, Americans watched live pictures of the Martian surface during the Viking landing, a visual thrill rival­ ing coverage of Apollo 11. In subsequent years, the Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft had close encounters with the outer planets of the solar system, sending back dazzling images, but at the time of this writing, Voyager One is leaving the solar system amid little fanfare. Television coverage of space outside of regular newscasts has become minimal.

     Between the last Skylab mission and the first space shuttle orbital mission in 1981, the only crewed American space flight was Apollo-Soyuz in 1975, a public relations stunt intended as a tangible demonstration of detente with the Soviet Union. The orbital linkup of three astronauts with two cosmonauts was entertaining if unimpressive by lunar mission. The mission was highly scripted and choreographed for a potential international television audience of a half billion. This was the first space mission broadcast live on television in the Soviet Union.

     The first space shuttle test landings over California were covered live, with NASA providing remarkable pictures from chase planes as Enterprise (named after pressure from Star Trek fans) separated from its Boeing 747 mother plane and glided to Earth. Coverage of the long-delayed first shuttle space flight in 1981 was as abundant as in 1960s missions and occasionally reminiscent of 1960s coverage for its Cold War rhetoric-including the breathless reporting of a  Soviet spy ship lurking off the coast as the shuttle Columbia returned from orbit.

     Coverage of the space shuttle rapidly diminished, and live coverage of missions had ended long before the 25th shuttle mission on January 28, 1986. On that day, the shuttle Challenger; with a crew of seven including teacher and media darling Christine McAuliffe, exploded after liftoff. As President Ronald Reagan would speculate and the media would faithfully repeat, television became America's "electronic hearth," a common gathering place to seek understanding and so­ lace. Television was unprepared for such a tragedy, with speechless anchors, an unfortunate tendency to repeat the videotape of the explosion constantly, and irresponsible speculation about the possibility of survivors. But as a shared national tragedy, it was an event like none other.

     Thanks in part to television, the history of the American space program and its role in American life has never been completely written. Television presented fleeting spectacles, devoid of analysis, perspective, and retrospective. Given that the United States has generally approached the space program as a television spectacle, there was initially little demand for a deeper analysis of space exploration. It has only been since the 1970s that writers and scholars have attempted to specify the place of the space program in American culture. While television may have obscured this issue, it presented such unforgettable images that few people who witnessed Apollo 11, Viking, or Challenger on television could forget it. In the new millennium, after over 100 shuttle missions and the full-time habitation of the International Space Station, the space program had become seemingly too ordinary for extensive television coverage.

     In 2003, the second space shuttle tragedy proved as much. As the shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas, killing its crew of seven, initial television news coverage was intense. It quickly dropped off, however, and coverage of the investigation and aftermath of the accident was slight, as a new generation  of Americans expressed little shock  or  interest. NASA now finds itself the victim of its own early success. Ambitious plans developed in the 1970s at the height of NASA's popularity have trapped it in expensive programs that now have little support from the scientific community or the public. In 2001, under the Bush administration, NASA developed plans to take tourists to space and sell advertising space on the sides of its rockets and spacecraft, as space exploration and exploitation increasingly shifts from the once invincible and highly visible NASA to the  mostly secret efforts of the military and private industry.