In the late 1950s, as Sputnik reshaped the Space Race, the U.S. Air Force quietly studied Project A119, a proposal to detonate an atomic bomb on the Moon as a spectacle visible from Earth. The plan ...

Turn back the page to the Atomic Age. It’s 1958. The United States and the Soviet Union have been busy testing nuclear weapons on Earth, but the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1 in 1957 has ...

In an attempt to catch up in the Space Race, the United States devised a plan to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon. Project ...

In the 1950s, with the USSR seemingly sprinting ahead in the space race, US scientists hatched a bizarre plan – nuking the surface of the Moon to frighten the Soviets. The moment astronaut Neil ...

The year was 1958. The Cold War was in full swing, Dwight Eisenhower was halfway into his second term as president, and the United States was in locked in a tense competition with the Soviet Union to ...

“Don’t tell me the sky’s the limit when there are footprints on the Moon.” We’ve all heard that clichéd phrase at least once in our lives. Leaving the high frequency at which this go-to motivational ...

Long before JFK spoke inspiringly of sending humans to the Moon, the American intelligence community was concocting a very different plan. Landing on the Moon was option B. Option A was to detonate a ...

It was the height of the Cold War. At odds were the United States and the former Soviet Union, both attempting to posture and propagandize their way to a win in a geopolitical dispute that dragged on ...

In today’s world, it is hard to realize how frightened Americans were at the news of Sputnik orbiting the Earth. Part of it was a fear of what a rival nation could do if they could fly over your ...

Known as Project A119, the programme was drawn up by the United States Air Force with the aim of detonating a nuke on the Moon, with the aid of the space agency. According to the files, the “study” ...