From an outsider’s perspective, Lamar Dodd must have seemed like an unlikely choice for a commission to create paintings on the subject of space. Dodd was in the first group recruited for the NASA Art Program, which tasked artists with translating the cultural and scientific monumentality of the space missions to a national audience.

In part two of Walking on the Moon, we’re talking about the important science still happening with Apollo Moon rocks here on Earth a half-century later. 

On July 11, 1969 – only 5 days before Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin set out on their journey to the Moon – a relatively unknown British musician named David Bowie released a single titled Space Oddity.

When early astronauts traveled into space, and in this case, the Moon, lives depended on communications equipment that kept them in contact at all times with those stationed on Earth, like this "Snoopy Cap" communications carrier.

"When I was a kid – maybe 5 or 6 – I remember my dad calling me into the living room and sitting me down in front of our almost comically tiny black-and-white TV screen."

Bob Gilruth, more than anyone else, created the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs and the Houston center that managed them.

Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin was the first astronaut to have a Ph.D. We explore his thesis on “Line-of-Sight Guidance Techniques for Manned Orbital Rendezvous.”

Abraham Silverstein (1908-2001), created and named the Apollo program and, most critically, pushed the adoption of liquid hydrogen as a rocket fuel for the boosters that launched Apollo. 

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing, AirSpace examines what we knew then, what we know now, and what mysteries of lunar science still remain.