Over The Moon

Anchorman Walter Cronkite uses models to explain America's Explorer 1 mission to viewers on the CBS television network in 1958. — CBS Photo Archive

CBS News Anchor Walter Cronkite uses models to explain America's Explorer 1 mission to viewers in 1958. Explorer 1, officially called Satellite 1958 Alpha, was the first artificial satellite successfully put into orbit by the U.S. Launched on Jan. 31, 1958, the module discovered the Van Allen radiation belts around the Earth. The launch pre-dated the establishment of NASA by five months.

CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite covered NASA missions from Mercury through the space shuttle. In 2006, he was named an Ambassador of Exploration - the only recipient of the award who was not an astronaut or NASA employee. Calling the honor, "beyond anything I could have ever believed," Cronkite said he wanted to share it with his fellow journalists who covered the great adventure of space exploration.

Walter Cronkite at CBS News Control Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla., where astronaut Scott Carpenter was set to orbit the Earth in his Aurora 7 spacecraft, May 22, 1962.

Surrounded by spacecraft models, Walter Cronkite, right, listens to astronaut and politician John Glenn on Feb. 8, 1967. As one the first astronauts with NASA's Mercury program, Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth aboard Friendship 7 in 1962. He returned to space on the space shuttle Discovery in 1998.

CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite uses a model to help explain NASA's Apollo 7 mission during his coverage of the mission from North American Rockwell Space Center, Houston, Texas, Oct. 21, 1968. Cronkite died at age 92 on July 17, 2009, just three days before the 40th anniversary of the moon landing.

During a 1968 visit to the Langley Research Center, the adventurous Walter Cronkite tried out the Reduced Gravity Walking Simulator - a series of cable-supported slings hanging from the Lunar Landing Research Facility designed to approximate lunar locomo — NASA

During a 1968 visit to the Langley Research Center, an adventurous Walter Cronkite tried out the Reduced Gravity Walking Simulator - a series of cable-supported slings hanging from the Lunar Landing Research Facility designed to approximate lunar locomotion.

Walter Cronkite holds up a copy of The New York Times the day after Apollo 11 landed on the moon, July 20, 1969. Cronkite anchored the launch, shouting "go, baby, go" as it rocketed into space. As it landed on the lunar surface at 4:19 p.m. EDT, Cronkite famously exclaimed, "Man on the moon!" "Oh, boy!" and then, "Whew, boy!" He remained on the air for 24 of the network's 27 hours of CBS' lunar walk special.

Walter Cronkite holds up a copy of the New York Daily News the day after Apollo 11 first landed on the moon, July 20, 1969. "(That) man, having left his own environment, could go to a distant orb, could go to the moon, was quite clearly a breakthrough that was going to make an immense difference to the future of mankind," Cronkite said in 2000.

Walter Cronkite served as the keynote speaker at NASA's Apollo 11 20th Anniversary Black Tie reception in Houston on July 25, 1989. Here he is shown reminicing with former Johnson Space Center Directors Robert Gilruth and Christopher C. Kraft Jr.

Walter Cronkite describes his reactions as he reported the landing of the Apollo 11 lunar module on the moon in front of the Saturn 5 Aft End, the F-1 rocket engines of the first stage of the Apollo 11/Saturn 5 launch vehicle, in Washington, D.C. July 20, 2004.

Twins Zane and Paxton Gunn gaze at the Ambassador of Exploration Award, a sample of lunar rock encased in Lucite, presented by NASA to veteran journalist Walter Cronkite. Cronkite was the only recipient of the award who was not an astronaut or NASA employee. The award is housed at the Center for American History, in Austin, Texas.