ReadWriteWeb

In July 1969 when the US Apollo 11 mission landed on the Moon, an estimated 500 million people tuned in to watch on TV across the world. The space race between the US and the Russians had captured the public's imagination the world over. Over the next few years, though, public interest in lunar exploration began to wane and NASA space missions were no longer a television spectacle. With unmanned missions to Mars over the past few years, however, that interest is back. People are no longer glued to their television sets, but instead to their computer screens. For tonight's Phoenix lander touch down, NASA is pulling out all the stops for Internet coverage, as it expects over a 100 million people to log on.