As described in Von Braun's The Mars Project, published first in 1952 in a German spaceflight journal and in the U.S. the following year as a slim book, the ferry rocket's first stage, with broad ...

Born Maria von Quistorp in Berlin in 1928, she married Wernher von Braun in 1947 in Landshut, Germany, under U.S. military guard amid concerns about Soviet efforts to recruit German rocket engineers.