History could have followed a far more harrowing path, were it not for a vital international agreement – the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.

In 1989 Soviet authorities admitted publicly for the first time the existence of a formerly secret programme to land a cosmonaut on the Moon. The space race between the USA and USSR, so well established in the lexicon of the 1960s, had indeed been real. Even as the Americans were preparing for their final Apollo Moon landing […]