In Washington, Kennedy acted as if he already knew about Khrushchev’s change of heart. JFK went ahead in ordering NASA to begin work on a joint U.S.-Soviet lunar mission. On November 12, 1963, JFK issued his National Security Action Memorandum 271, ordering NASA to implement “my September 20 proposal for broader cooperation between the United States and the USSR in outer space, including cooperation in lunar landing programs.”[10]
