New Moon Rising

The Making of America's new Space Vision

New Moon Rising is a detailed history of the evolution of the U.S. civil space program since the February 1, 2003 space shuttle Columbia accident to the release of the Presidential Commission report on Moon, Mars, and Beyond on June 2, 2004. During these extraordinary 16 months, nearly every element of NASA’s leadership was placed under a political microscope, with the result that the space agency set upon a new course of reorganization, resulting with President George W. Bush’s announcement of an entirely new space policy for the U.S.

Sietzen and Cowing were granted unprecedented access to senior policy makers as the plan was assembled during 2003 and 2004. They were given exclusive details on the meetings between President George Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, and senior members of the White House staff as the planning process began.

In addition Sietzen and Cowing examined how policy was translated from paper into hardware designs including the first outline of the plan's new space vehicle and how the inspiration behind the architecture once used in the Apollo program was summoned back to guide 21st century space planners.

New Moon Rising describes how the Columbia accident and the political outcry for a new central goal for the U.S. space program gave rise to what would become the most far reaching change in U.S. space policy in a generation.

New Moon Rising comes with a DVD-Video disc featuring President Bush's Space Initiative speech at NASA HQ, Vice President Cheney's visit to JPL, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe's press conference in January 2004 and all of the latest animations from NASA showing some of the proposed ideas for the future exploration of the Solar System.

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