574: Project Redsun: NASA's Secret Manned Missions to Mars

The Why Files: Operation Podcast

In 1973, while the world watched the Apollo missions end, something extraordinary happened in the Amazon jungle. A rocket carried humanity's most advanced spacecraft toward Mars, crewed by familiar names: Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Ilyushin.
Project Redsun united Cold War enemies to pursue a singular goal - establishing a human presence on Mars. The mission succeeded, but the crew discovered something that changed everything.
Decades later, whistleblowers emerged with photographs, documents, and footage that paint an astonishing picture of space exploration's hidden history.