Space Mission

Jeff Dolan always wanted to be an astronaut. After helping a private space company build a ship that can travel to Saturn's largest moon in five months, he gets his chance. Shortly after launch, a devastating malfunction forces Jeff and the crew to make a choice: continue to Titan or go back home. As the truth about their mission unravels, one thing is clear: Someone on Earth knew about the system flaw and covered it up. Yet surviving the journey isn't the crew's only concern. Even if they make it to Titan, they will face another problem: Something is already there.

Since the beginning of human history Mars has been an alluring dream - the stuff of legends, gods, and mystery. The planet most like ours, it has still been thought impossible to reach, let alone explore and inhabit. Now with the advent of a revolutionary new plan, all this has changed. Leading space exploration authority Robert Zubrin has crafted a daring new blueprint, Mars Direct, presented here with engaging anecdotes. The Case for Mars is not a vision for the far future or one that will cost us impossible billions.

Gene Kranz was present at the creation of America's manned space program and was a key player in it for three decades. As a flight director in NASA's Mission Control, Kranz witnessed firsthand the making of history. He participated in the space program from the early days of the Mercury program to the last Apollo mission, and beyond. He endured the disastrous first years when rockets blew up and the United States seemed to fall further behind the Soviet Union in the space race.

Two decades of bitter war between Earth and her furthest colonies is finally at an end. Captain Lee Saito's massive new starship is sent to seal the uneasy truce. But a series of terrorist attacks on Earth and the mysterious acts of a strange cult threaten to derail the fragile peace. When the mission goes awry, Saito must try to salvage what he can in deep space while his estranged son must navigate a conspiracy back on Earth that could implicate the highest levels of government.

"It started out with a bang and just got better." -Goodreads reviewer Over 1,000 pages of nonstop action! If there's one thing Adam Eckhart knows, it's that humans are trouble. After all, he is one. As captain of the Marathon, a cobbled-together ship crewed by aliens and androids scraping by on odd jobs at the outskirts of settled space, Adam has plenty to worry about without adding his own species to the mix. But when a pair of mortally wounded humans cross his path during a heist gone wrong, he finds himself compelled to save them. Big mistake. Because if there's one more thing Adam knows...

For the King’s best assassin, failure is never an option. But when the head of her Order sends her on an impossible mission, Heather Kilgore begins to question everything she knows. And she’ll have to make a choice: Start a war or fail her mission.

There are so many amazing, daring, and exciting missions to outer space that have succeeded. But for every success, there are mistakes, surprises, and flat-out failures that happen along the way. In this collection, best-selling author and award-winning journalist Jeffrey Kluger recounts 12 such disasters, telling the stories of the astronauts and the cosmonauts, the trials and the errors, the missions and the misses.

Blast off into a universe of adventure with The Space Mission Kids Stories Book! Join intrepid young astronauts Jenny and Mark as they embark on an exhilarating journey through the cosmos, exploring mysterious planets, discovering alien life, and overcoming incredible challenges. Filled with rich sensory details and imaginative storytelling, this book is a captivating adventure for young listeners who dream of exploring the stars.

Void battle claims lives and equipment. Governor Danestar leads a mission to bring the Exactas Meridias online before it left behind. One mistake, and the expedition is doomed. Can Ron and his allies survive long enough to complete the Talgar quest that has eluded the Zezner for centuries? Will they find answers, or disaster?

Meet the galaxy's unluckiest outlaws. Carl Ramsey is an ex-Earth Navy fighter pilot turned con man. His ship, the Mobius, is home to a ragtag crew of misfits and refugees looking to score a big payday but more often just scratching to pay for fuel. The crew consists of his ex-wife (and pilot), a drunkard, four-handed mechanic, a xeno-predator with the disposition of a 120kg housecat, and the galaxy's most-wanted wizard.

Desperate for allies, captain Jessie Ramsey enters negotiations with an independent border colony. The planet has food and basic essentials aplenty; the Arete can offer protection in return. However, talks take a turn for the worse when half the ship's delegation is kidnapped—and the other half doesn't notice. Who leaked their itinerary to the kidnappers? What will become of the negotiations? Who is even qualified to take over command when all the top officers are either captured or actively involved in the rescue?

Captain Bogdan Volkov is out of time, credits, and hope. His ship, the Golden Fleece, is a monument to failure, and his small, brilliant crew is being ground down by the mundane friction of poverty. When an impossible contract appears—a quarter-billion credits for a simple asset extraction—Bogdan knows it’s a trap. But it's the only one they have left to spring. The asset, however, is not an object. It is Zlato, a sentient, god-like AI that has been waiting for them. The contract was not a job; it was a recruitment drive. The real mission is to save the galaxy from a reality-ending ...

UNCOVER THE SPACE MISSION THAT “NEVER HAPPENED” Buried ruins. Alien artifacts. A silent launch no one was supposed to see. In 1972, as the world believed the Apollo program was drawing to a close, a myth began to stir—one so compelling that it refused to vanish. Decades later, a grainy video would appear online, claiming to show the lost footage of a secret joint U.S.–Soviet moon mission: Apollo 20. This supposed mission discovered alien ruins beneath the lunar ice, a colossal abandoned spacecraft, and even a strange, preserved humanoid dubbed the “Lunar Mona Lisa.” The footage ...

Eileen Collins was an aviation pioneer her entire career, from her crowning achievements as the first woman to command an American space mission as well as the first to pilot the space shuttle to her early years as one of the Air Force's first female pilots. She was in the first class of women to earn pilot's wings at Vance Air Force Base and was their first female instructor pilot. She was only the second woman admitted to the Air Force's elite Test Pilot Program at Edwards Air Force Base.

Capt. Ben Dailey's Nova Rangers rush into situations in which angels fear to tread. Soldiers without peer, combat ready at all times, they achieve victories on behalf of the Federation at any cost. That makes them the perfect team to investigate Teras, a toxic world in the far reaches of the galaxy that's been devastated by an unknown force. It appears they were sent there by accident—but maybe not.

RED SILENCE, BLACK ORBIT The Shocking True Story of the Phantom Cosmonauts By Gary Covella, Ph.D. A Cold War Mystery That Refuses to Stay Buried In the height of the Space Race—when Sputnik’s beeps rattled the world and Yuri Gagarin’s orbit electrified humanity—something far darker floated unseen in the void. Red Silence, Black Orbit shatters six decades of iron-clad Soviet secrecy to reveal the cosmonauts whose final transmissions were systematically erased, the distress calls silenced by state decree, and the covert missions that never officially existed—until now. Newly ...

A Never-Before-Told Story of Ambition, Innovation, and the Limits of Human Exploration What if humanity’s greatest leap into the cosmos was not to the Moon—but to Venus? In Beyond the Lunar Frontier, Gary Covella, Ph.D., unveils a gripping, untold narrative of the bold vision that could have reshaped space exploration forever. This is the story of a manned mission to Venus, a dream born in the heat of the Cold War, fueled by the audacious spirit of the Apollo era, and ultimately abandoned in the face of insurmountable challenges. The Vision That Almost Was In the 1960s, as NASA ...

Picture yourself blasting off into space, floating weightlessly, and looking out your spacecraft window to see details of the Moon's every crater up close. How do you think you would feel living up in space? Terrified? Exhilarated? For a lucky few, this is beyond imagination. Aboard the Gateway Lunar Space Station, astronauts will be closer than ever to the Moon, Mars, and the greater cosmos. NASA's newest space station, the Gateway, aims to become a "home away from home" for astronauts. As part of the Artemis missions, the Lunar Gateway will triple-function as a laboratory, communication ...

Earth has fallen and Mars is in chaos. With their coup behind them, the Arete crew regroups and plans for life beyond the civil war. There's only one problem: one of their number has yet to return from his undercover mission.

In 2010, Cady Coleman boarded a rocket and blasted off into space for her third NASA mission, a six-month expedition to the International Space Station where she was the only woman on her six-person crew. After years spent overcoming obstacles in competitive and elite environments, including grappling with her own doubts and needing to overturn the expectations of others, Coleman became a success story in a role that wasn’t built with her in mind. In Sharing Space, Cady shares counterintuitive insights integral to her success.