In the 1960s, while Nasa's astronauts performed heroics in space, back on earth their wives became celebrities Lily Koppel explains how their story reflected a new era for women At home in Nassau Bay, Joan Aldrin applauds as she watches TV coverage of the splashdown of Apollo 11 What was it like to be the wife of a Nasa spaceman? While their husbands hurtled through space on death-defying missions, for the astronauts" wives it meant instant celebrity, taking tea with Jackie Kennedy at the White House and attending high society galas. They became fashion icons, smiling perfectly for Life magazine photo shoots, teetering under extravagantly lacquered rocket-style hairdos, twirling for the camera in intergalactic white vinyl Mary Quant miniskirts (to match their husbands" gleaming spacecraft). If not for the wives, man might never have walked on the moon. Eagerly awaiting lift-off in the space flight that would make him the first American to orbit the earth, John Glenn (one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts chosen in 1959) sat in the tiny cabin of his Friendship 7 space capsule on top of asteam-hissing 94-foot Atlas rocket packed with 367,000 pounds of explosive liquid oxygen. The Mercury 7 astronauts and their wives Meanwhile, a crowd of hundreds flattened the manicured lawn of his home in Arlington, Virginia, where the assembled reporters wondered aloud before network television cameras what the astronaut's wife, Annie, could possibly be going through at that moment. In the Glenn family room, with its cosy rugs and brick fireplace, the walls cluttered with pictures and certificates celebrating her freckle-faced husband's accomplishments as a test- and bomber pilot in the Second World War and Korea, Annie sat nervously with her fellow Mercury 7 wives as part of a ritual they called the Death Watch, with their characteristic black humour. Ever since the press mobbed Louise Shepard, whose husband Alan Shepard was the first American to go into space, the blinds would be taped shut on the day of a launch, to keep the press from crawling in through the windows. The wives brought formidable pot-luck spreads of devilled eggs and home-made "moon cake," a banana or coconut cream pie confection topped with whipped cream or meringue, swirled to look like the lunar surface. Someone would man the coffee pot and empty the rapidly filling ashtrays, chain-smoking being the occupational hazard of the astrowives when dealing with teeth-grinding stress. Someone else shuttled constantly between the telephone and the radio, later replaced by the Nasa "squawk box," an amazing space-age device broadcasting the blow-by-blow between astronaut husbands up in orbit and mission control on earth. Cocktails with the Mercury wives in 1959. From left: Betty Grissom, Marge Slayton and Trudy Cooper A tense Rene Carpenter during husband Scott's Aurora 7 flight, May 1962 Marilyn Lovell, wife of Apollo 13's Jim, listens to coverage of the troubled mission, April 1970 Annie could see the media swarming on her lawn on the three TV sets playing in her living room, each tuned to one of the major networks. All she had to do now - with the world watching - was perch on a cushion, her charm-braceleted hands around her drawn-up knees, and her Siamese cat purring at her feet as she waited for the launch of the gigantic stick of dynamite that would blast her husband into space. America had been in love with the ultimate astrowife Annie Glenn ever since she had caught attention in a Life cover story, Astronauts" Wives: Their Inner Thoughts, Worries. Ten million readers of the world's biggest magazine learned how she and her spaceman, "Johnny," had met in a playpen as toddlers, later becoming high-school sweethearts and eventually marrying. Photos showed the Glenns water-skiing across a glistening blue lake, like a homespun version of the Kennedys at Hyannis Port. Annie played the organ for Sunday evening sing-alongs featuring Broadway hits and Presbyterian hymns. Her brown page-boy haircut perfectly in place, Annie delivered what Nasa demanded of each astronaut family - a squeaky-clean image. Jo Schirra and Marge Slayton with their children, September 1959 Betty Grissom after husband Gus's Mercury module hatch blows open, 21 July 1961 Life magazine bought exclusive access to the wives' personal stories for $500,000, split evenly Despite the glamour and drama of their husbands" jobs, Annie and her fellow astrowives were mothers and housewives first, cleaning their homes, whipping up gourmet meals and driving their young children to school and various activities. When President John F Kennedy committed the nation to landing a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s, the astronaut wives became international symbols of apple pie, the American dream and the soaring promise of the space age. Nasa tried to protect the astronauts and the space agency by maintaining a boy-scout image for the men. But the wives faced the tough task of coping with a level of stress equal to that of their celebrated spouses, and without anyone to help, they turned to one another for support. They experienced mankind's highest highs and most devastating lows "Nasa wanted perfect wives, perfect children, perfect homes," said one wife, Susan Borman. It wasn't discussed, but you had better be, in every sense, the all-American family in everything you say and do! During the competition to be chosen for the moon mission, astronauts desperate to be picked believed selection came only with a model marriage. The tighter the marriage, the credo went, the better the flight position. Broken relationships, tears and screaming fits must be kept behind closed doors. Nasa looked into the backgrounds of not only the men but also their families. "They didn't want an oddball," said Susan. The men trained for weeks on end at tropical Cape Canaveral, Florida, taking over the stylish Holiday Inn, near the Satellite Motel, spinning its famous orbiting Earth sign. Some of the astronauts, notorious drinkers who drove fast and chased adoring women, cheated serially. Pretty air stewardesses with flexible flying schedules in hotpants and silver go-go boots presented a much-loathed rival group to the astrowives. Joan Aldrin cries in relief as the lunar module lands on the moon during Apollo 11 on 20 July 1969 Barbara Young chain-smokes as she watches her husband's Gemini 3 mission, March 1965 Of course, all of the wives wanted to believe that their own husbands stuck to their training for all those weeks at the Cape, resisting the "Cape Cookies" - the groupies who followed the astronauts as if they were The Beatles. Even when the astronauts were back home after learning jungle survival from Panamanian natives, brutal 18-hour days at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas, left the wives lucky to see their men once or twice a week. Stuck at home with the children, the wives started getting together for coffee and martini hours. This is fun. Let's start doing this on an organised basis," suggested Susan Borman, so eventually the Astronaut Wives Club was born: weekly tea and cocktail events and Tupperware-style launch parties. The members of the club now meet for reunions, which they've been holding since the early 1990s. Rene watches Alan Shepard's Redstone rocket blast off, May 1961 Rene and children on the day the Mercury astronauts were announced, 1959 I decided to write the story of the astronaut wives after seeing an incredible Life magazine photo of them in their sky-rocketing beehives, outfitted in their candy-coloured minidresses. When I learned that they actually have a club - and that they raised their families in the Houston "space burbs" near Nasa's operations, in a community known as "Togethersville" - I knew that I had to write the book and tell the wives" story: the emotional side of the space race. I started by visiting the wives across the country and unlocking the secrets of this very exclusive club. I was aware that the press had often hunted down and harassed the wives and their children, so it was important for me to get to know them as women and friends first. I interviewed each wife extensively and spent a great deal of time with them together as a group. I was lucky that the women were so forthcoming with me. Now in their 70s, they finally felt it was time to let loose a little and come clean. Joan Aldrin, Buzz's wife, even gave me her diary, which she kept on the Apollo 11 "Giant Leap" world tour as her husband's life was spiralling into the celebrity stratosphere. On this trip, the famous astronauts Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong - who was the first man to walk on the moon - presented a genuine moon rock to the Queen. Pat Collins (in red with beehive) and friends celebrate splashdown at the end of Apollo 11, July 1969 What interested me the most was how the astrowives, constantly exposed to the public, were probably America's first reality stars. Life had purchased exclusive access to their personal stories for $500,000, split evenly among the families, plus life insurance policies, which no one else would grant an astronaut. In 1962 alone, the astronauts and their wives appeared on the cover of Life more than a dozen times, and its reporters were embedded in their suburban homes. To cope with the unique pressures of being married to a spaceman, from trying to live up to Nasa's impossible standards for the ideal housewife to dealing with absentee husbands constantly tempted by Cape Cookies, the wives banded together. The book features characters from each generation of the Club, such as golden girl Annie Glenn,and Betty Grissom - tight-faced with a perpetually worried expression - who worked as a late-night telephone operator to put her astronaut husband Gus through college and was doomed to be the ugly duckling of the space wives, especially next to platinum blonde Rene Carpenter who, JFK made clear, was his favourite astronaut wife. Later in the book, the next generation of Apollo wives share the spotlight as their husbands compete to get to the moon, including Susan Borman and Jane Conrad - tall, slender, "sensationally attractive," wrote Norman Mailer - who was married to her Princeton graduate husband "Pete," known as the first Ivy League astronaut. Marilyn Lovell toasts husband Jim on Apollo 8, Christmas 1968 Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins in quarantine Pat and Mike Collins at breakfast, March 1969 The women, who experienced mankind's highest highs and most devastating lows, dramatise the cultural clash between the soaring optimism of Kennedy's New Frontier and the social upheavals of the 1960s. Their story tells a larger one, about women's changing roles as the world moved into a new era. It wasn't all martinis and devilled eggs - it was also the launch of the modern woman. My favourite mission turned out to be Apollo 8, the first flight to the moon, which took place over Christmas Eve 1968, because it showed how two women dealt in very different ways with the pressures of having their men go to the moon: Susan Borman truly believed that her husband Frank would die orbiting the moon (the mission having been given just a 50:50 chance of successful return), while Marilyn, married to Jim Lovell - who would later command the unlucky Apollo 13 mission - kept the faith. Although it is serious history, I always wanted the book to read like a page-turner. I hope readers get into the spirit of what it meant in a very real, womanly way to send your husband a quarter of a million miles away - to the moon (and back)! After returning home from space, many of the astronauts struggled to adjust to life on earth. "It was hard for them to come home," said Faye Stafford. Who could ever compete with the moon? I was lucky if I could come in second. Marilyn Lovell saw the wives" role differently, saying, "I felt like we were on a mission together." The Astronaut Wives Club by Lily Koppel will be published by Headline on Thursday, priced £16.99 - to order a copy for £14.99, with free p&p, contact the you bookshop on 0844 472 4157 or click here.