Space

Peter Mayhew, Harrison Ford, Alec Guinness and Mark Hamill, on-set of the film Star Wars

Star Wars: why did the film make history?

Yuri Gagarin before the first space flight, 12 April 1961. (Credit: RIA Novosti)

In pictures: Soviet cosmonauts and the birth of the space age

The Lockheed U-2 shares little in common with a flying saucer. (Image by Alamy)

Q&A How did Area 51 become associated with aliens?

(Image courtesy of NASA)

NASA’s unknown Welsh hero: the story of Tecwyn Roberts

Kendrick Oliver explores the space race that led to the 1969 moon landing and considers the legacy of the momentous events of July 1969. (Photo by NASA/Newsmakers/Getty Images)

The race to the moon

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BBC Sky At Night Magazine Sir Patrick Moore’s memories of Apollo 11

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BBC Science Focus Magazine Small steps: How NASA prepared for the first moonwalk

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the moon's surface

The history of the moon landing: everything you need to know

A cartoon showing a man in a suit of armour on the moon

Q&A Did NASA really pick the brains of the Tower of London armoury when designing the first space suits?

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BBC Sky at Night Magazine Where did the Apollo astronauts land on the Moon?

Launch of the Apollo 16 mission, 1972. ((Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)

The Space Race: The Cold War rivalry that put humans on the Moon

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Science Focus podcast Why is the Moon landing still relevant 50 years on?

A portrait of 17th-century scholar John Wilkins

Ye final frontier: the 17th-century space race

(Illustration by Kate Hazell for BBC World Histories Magazine)

Back down to Earth: the legacy of the 1969 moon landing

Gerald Heard had a peculiar idea that the UFOs then being sighted all across the globe, as such as this ‘sighting’ in Sicily, were piloted not by humanoid ETs, as you may have presumed, but by alien super-bees from Mars. (Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images)

6 of history’s strangest ever theories about outer space