. >> so at what point did nasa pick up with gerard kipersome >> very early on in the 1960s. so nasa, of course, was working on the apollo missions which going to send astronauts to the moon but missions before that that were intended to study the moon and get that information that we needed about the moon. and so in the early 1960s they started sending spacecraft called rangers up to the moon and they were hard landers what that means is essentially spacecraft that crash lands on sphafts moon, and that idea was just to get back photographs spacecraft wasn't going to survive but photos as it was going down and first several of these that they try to send were all failures. and i think it was about 1964 they decided to reare organization the whole project and they called up gerard kiper they asked him to lead this team. and so gerard kiper led team finally that got a successful ranger a ranger 7 that successfully got first close why photograph of the moon. >> another character in your book under desert skies is u.n. withcan kier who is that? >> incredibly important member of t