'Through the windows of the slowly turning spacecraft they looked out at the place where the sun had once been, and there was the moon- a huge, magnificent sphere bathed in the eerie blue light of earthshine, each crater rendered in ghostly detail.' The race to the moon was won spectacularly by Apollo 11 on 20 July 1969. When astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their 'giant step' across a ghostly lunar landscape, they were watched by some 600 million people on Earth 250,000 miles away. A Man on the Moon is the definitive account of the heroic Apollo programme- from the tragedy of the fire in Apollo 1 during a simulated launch, through the euphoria of the first moonwalk, to the discoveries made by the first scientist in space aboard Apollo 17. Drawing on hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews with the astronauts and team, this is the story of the twentieth century's greatest human achievement, minute-by-minute, in the words of those who were there.

Author Biography

Born in 1956, Andrew Chaikin grew up in Great Neck, New York, with a fascination for the heavens and space exploration. While studying geology at Brown University he participated in the Viking mission to Mars at the N A S A/Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He has worked as a researcher, editor, writer, commentator and television consultant. A Man on the Moon is the result of eight years' research and writing, including interviews with each of the twenty-three surviving Apollo voyagers. Chaikin lives in Arlington, Massachusetts.