Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter covered moon landing

John Noble Wilford, a Pulitzer Prize-winning science reporter for The New York Times who covered America’s first moon landing a half-century ago with the zeal of a fellow space traveler stepping onto the powdery lunar surface alongside Neil Armstrong, died Monday at his home in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was 92.

His niece, Susan Tremblay, said the cause was prostate cancer.

Under the front-page banner headline “MEN WALK ON MOON,” with a Houston dateline of July 21, 1969, Wilford gave readers an awe-inspiring and comprehensive account of Apollo 11’s gentle touchdown and exploratory mission on the moon’s arid Sea of Tranquility after a 230,000-mile voyage from Earth.

“It was man’s first landing on another world,” he wrote, “the realization of centuries of dreams, the fulfillment of a d