In 1985 Reston was the "Newsweek", PBS, and BBC candidate to be the first writer in space on the NASA space shuttle. That program was scrapped after the Challenger accident in January 1986. On May 23, 1994 the author published his second cover story in Time Magazine entitled "Cosmic Clash" on the amazing impact of the Shoemaker Levy 9 comet into the planet, Jupiter.