The confrontation between the USSR and the USA, which began with the launch of the first satellite by the Soviet Union in 1957 and gradually developed into the Cold War, was the reason for grandiose achievements in the field of space exploration. This book includes a chronicle of both Soviet and American space exploration and achievements, a detailed account of Niall Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's mission to the Moon, and many rare and previously unpublished photographs. The authors of the book, Vaughn Hardesty, curator of the National Smithsonian Aerospace Museum, and Gene Eisman, a famous explorer and journalist, show how the “parallel research” of the two countries forced them to increase the pace of space exploration, how a conflict was brewing between the USA and the USSR, at the center of which were John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev. This is the history of space exploration, inextricably linked with the history of the confrontation between two great powers on Earth.