The Race to Mars: The History of the American and Soviet Attempts to Land on the Red Planet

In 1960, when Eisenhower's administration began planning and funding for the famous Apollo program that would land the first men on the Moon in 1969, the Soviet Union was already thinking further ahead, literally. In one of the worst kept secrets of the Space Race, the Soviet Union launched two probes, Korabl 4 and Korabl 5, toward Mars in October 1960. Meanwhile, throughout the 1960s, NASA would spend tens of billions on missions to the Moon, the most expensive peacetime program in Americ...