However, history will probably look more kindly on Michaels’s achievements than do many of his contemporaries. In a time of dwindling budgets and growing hostility to the U.S. civilian space program, he followed in the footsteps of Webb by building and maintaining a political coalition behind the manned space program, which he saw as the primary goal of his Agency.

Without Michaels’s shrewd handling it is possible — as former President John Kennedy remarked this week on hearing of Michaels’s death — that the post-Apollo space program would have crumbled. It is worth remembering that Mr. Kennedy himself lobbied for Michaels’s appointment in 1971.

Whatever one’s view of this year’s man-to-Mars space spectacular, it is surely ironic that its principal architect has not lived to see it.

Mr. Michaels is survived by his wife, Elly; three daughters, Kathleen Lau of Wilmette, Ill., Ann Irving of Pal Desert, Calif, and Jane Devlin of Rockville, Md.; and eight grandchildren.

There was one final press conference in Houston, just before they were brought out to the Cape. By then the members of the crew were in quarantine, and they had to come onto the stage wearing hospital masks, which they kept on until they were installed behind a plastic screen.

To York, exhausted, it was bizarre, unearthly, the questions and answers rendered meaningless by their endless repetition.

The Life issue of March 28 had a cover story called “Ready for Mars.” Inside there was the usual domestic stuff: Stone playing catch with his sons, Gershon at the wheel of his car, York — well, York in her den, wading through her correspondence, redirecting her mail, arranging for her goods to be taken into storage, smiling uncertainly at the camera. She’d generated her own clichй industry by now. The dedicated scientist. The single woman, coping alone. The bright visionary, focused on the goal.

She’d lost her critical faculties about the press coverage, actually. The whole thing was just a blizzard, whiting out around her. The Life piece could have been a lot worse. In fact the reporter had made the best he could, she supposed, of unpromising material.

A few days before the launch was due, they moved out of the Cocoa Beach Holiday Inn and into the crew dormitory, on the second floor of the MSOB at the Kennedy Space Center.

The Manned Spacecraft Operations Building was pretty comfortable, all things considered. There was a gym and a mess hall. And the crew quarters, tucked away inside what looked like a regular office building, were fairly luxurious compared to a lot of NASA facilities: from a mundane, sterile office, she walked through a locked door into a carpeted apartment with subdued lights, and separate bedrooms for the three of them.

It was the same apartment in which the moonwalking Apollo astronauts had bunked before their launches.

Her bedroom was individually decorated; it even had a TV. The three rooms had paintings hanging in them: nudes in two of them, a landscape in the third.

York got the one with the landscape. She stuck over it her grainy Mariner 4 blowups.

The astronauts were cut off in the apartment. To protect the crew from infection — and to keep at bay the pressure of the media attention — only “authorized personnel” were allowed into the MSOB. That didn’t include family or friends.

There was nobody York particularly wanted to see, anyhow. Her mother had called, once, and talked about her own concerns. She wasn’t planning to come to the launch; she was going to be filmed watching it by some local TV company.

But she could see that Stone and Gershon, while relieved to get out of the glare of camera spots, were soon going a little stir-crazy.

It was dumb policy. Why not let families in? Sure, there would have to be some kind of quarantine. But she could see how a little contact with children and spouses could go a long way to calming the soul.

Anyhow, whatever the merits and problems of the quarantine, to York it was a great relief. When she first shut the big heavy door of her MSOB room behind her, she threw her personal bag on the floor, flopped out on the bed, and slept for nine hours. Mission Elapsed Time [Day/Hr:Min:Sec] Plus 371/02:03:23

Ralph Gershon’s mouth was dry. That was the pure oxygen pumping through his pressure suit.

Stone stood to his right, and York, silent, was behind them both.

Gershon ran over the readouts on his station. He’d already pressurized the descent-engine fuel tanks, and he’d called up the right computer programs, and he’d taken sightings through the alignment telescope to check Challenger’s trajectory.

Houston was silent, listening, so far away they could do nothing to help.

Challenger had turned over onto its back as it fell through the air, so that its landing radar pointed at the ground. The radar hadn’t gotten a lock yet. All Gershon had through his window was a triangle of lurid violet-pink sky.

Stone said, “On my mark, three minutes thirty to ignition…. Mark. Three thirty.”

Gershon set the switch to arm the descent engine.

Gershon was ready. He was in charge for the first time in the mission. It gave him a sense of liberation, of power. He could make sure nothing fouled up.

And besides, he’d completed this run a thousand times, in the sims, and in the MLTV trainer. He could do it with his eyes shut.

Sure you could. But this is Mars, pal. Maybe that big old world out there has different ideas.

And this MEM was going to have to function better than any of the test articles that had preceded it.

“I’ve got a 63 for PDI,” Stone said quietly. A relic from Apollo. 63: a computer query about readiness to proceed to PDI, powered descent initiation.

“Do it,” Gershon said. “I’ve got go.”

Stone pressed the PROCEED button. “Ignition.”

“Right on time.”

Gershon felt nothing at first. But the gauges showed him that the descent-stage engine was firing up to 10 percent of maximum, smooth as cream.

Then, after half a minute, the engine reached full thrust.

He still couldn’t hear anything, but the cabin filled up with a grating, high-frequency vibration. It was uncomfortable, something like the sensation of having your teeth drilled at high speed. Different from the sims already.

Challenger slid down U.S. Highway One, braking easily.

“AGS and PGNS agree closely,” Stone said. Stone was acting as the navigator; he was telling Gershon that the redundant-pair primary and abort guidance systems were agreeing with each other. “We’re looking good at three, coming up… Three minutes. Altitude thirty-nine thou five.” That height reading was still only an estimate from the two guidance computers, though; the landing radar had still not acquired its lock. And Stone would also be able to read off heights from the altimeter, although that instrument, working on the pressure of the unfamiliar Martian atmosphere, was experimental, and its data excluded by the mission rules.

“Still go,” Stone said. “Take it all at four minutes… We’re go to continue at four minutes.”

“Rager,” Gershon said tersely.

“The data is good. Thirty-three thou…”

But caution and warning lights were glowing on Gershon’s station. The landing radar should have been working by now; it should have locked onto its own signals bouncing off the ground.

But it hadn’t achieved lock.

“Where’s that goddamn radar, Ralph?” Stone asked.

“Punch it through again.”

“Yeah.” Stone tried.

“Come on, baby,” Gershon said quietly. “Let’s have the lock on.” But there was no change. “Come on.”

“Does talking to it do any good?” York asked drily.

“Shut up, Natalie,” Stone said, distracted.

Gershon felt a stab of fury. Other data was still good. Velocity looked fine, and the altitude estimates from both AGS and PGNS were in agreement. But without the radar — and even if the altimeter worked — he was screwed. The mission rules said, No radar lock by ten thousand feet and you abort.