1996
“In the long-ago summer of 1969, when everyone who wasn’t obsessed with Chappaquiddick or Woodstock was glorying in the on the underreported mission to measure the planet’s ionosphere. But things have changed. Now NASA records 48 missions to Mars by all countries, including landings by three—the U.S., Soviet Union and China—and NASA is preparing to send its first humans to the red planet by 2040.