This hour on Focus, we'll listen back to a conversation with Homer Hickam, former NASA engineer and acclaimed author of Rocket Boys: A Memoir.

Guest: Alan Boss, Ph.D.

NASA's Kepler mission is the first space telescope designed specifically to look for planets similar to Earth outside of our solar system. In his recent book The Crowded Universe, astronomer Alan Boss argues that Earth-sized planets are plentiful in the universe. He joins the show today to talk more about the formation of Earthlike planets and the search for extraterrestrial life.

Guest: Chris Jones.

In November 2002, two American astronauts left Earth for a routine mission to the International Space Station. In February 2003, six of their colleagues boarded the space shuttle Columbia to return to the planet. Then came the bad news—Columbia had disintegrated only minutes away from landing, leaving the two still in space without their ride home. Today on Focus we'll get the full story from Chris Jones, author of Too Far from Home: A Story of Life and Death in Space.

Guest: Gerard DeGroot.

The massive moon craze of the 1960s was sold on a promise of a positive influence on the economy, on politics, and on American culture. It certainly made a considerable cultural impact at the time, but since that first step the American space program has been as barren as the satellite it landed on. Today on Focus, professor of modern history Gerard DeGroot joins us to discuss whether it was as big a leap for mankind as Armstrong suggested.