Space Mission

In August 1968 NASA made a bold decision: In just 16 weeks, the United States would launch humankind's first flight to the moon. Only the year before, three astronauts had burned to death in their spacecraft, and since then the Apollo program had suffered one setback after another. Meanwhile, the Russians were winning the space race, the Cold War was getting hotter by the month, and President Kennedy's promise to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade seemed sure to be broken.

In the year 2254 gravity was officially declared to be magic; the scientists gave up trying to figure it out and handed it over to the wizards. Without the inherent respect for the laws of physics, the wizards poked and prodded at gravity, poring over all that science knew about the attraction of one object to the next, and dismissed it as poppycock. They discovered ways around the tired, old limits and gave birth to the first true starships.

The galaxy's most feared pirate raiders are the megalodogs. Massive, nearly indestructible, and knowing just enough magic that science cannot save defenders. The best way to deal with them? Never to let them board your ship. If you invite them aboard, knowingly or not, you're pretty much screwed. That's the situation Captain Jessica Ramsey finds herself in. With her wizard brother Eric off on a personal quest halfway across the galaxy, her resources for dealing with the giant canines are limited. But once a special forces operative, always a special forces operative.

It has become clear JP, a soldier currently serving within the US Army, is part of a covert disclosure initiative to expose the public to the diverse projects involving “non-human intelligence” and exotic technologies that are known to the US military. However, in true military fashion this is being done in a way that maintains plausible deniability. As you will discover in Volume 2, almost all of JP’s missions involve “non-human intelligence” based on Earth in underwater or underground locations.

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?

On July 14, 2015, something amazing happened. More than three billion miles from Earth, a small NASA spacecraft called New Horizons screamed past Pluto at more than 32,000 miles per hour, focusing its instruments on the long-mysterious icy worlds of the Pluto system, and then, just as quickly, continued on its journey out into the beyond.

NASA's Orion spacecraft is pushing the limits of space travel and exploration like never before. The ultimate goal is a mission to Mars! Learn about the challenges that scientists, engineers, and astronauts must overcome to make this dream a reality.

Meet the Secret Explorers—a band of brainiac kids from all around the world. Everyone in this diverse group of young experts has a specialty, from outer space to dinosaurs, and each story follows a character who gets chosen for a "secret exploration".

They’re here. They’ve arrived. And they’re all eyes. The Voltarian scouting party - illegal aliens extraordinaire - on a top-secret expedition led by one Jettero Heller, Royal Officer of the Fleet. His mission: rescue the planet from pollution - and make it safe for the upcoming invasion. His problem: The planet may not want to be saved - and the invasion may just be a trick.

Captain Jessie Ramsey has a problem. Her giant ship, the newly renamed Arete, needs more crew to keep up and running than she can currently muster. Also, she can barely feed the ones she's got, since hunting pirates hasn't turned out to be the bonanza of repatriated stolen goods she'd imagined.

Jessie and Eric Ramsey finally catch a break. The League of Independent Planets has granted them asylum and allowed them to live on the techno-paradise world of Phabian. Jessie gets a clerical job. Eric ends up working at a factory making magical construction materials. He might even have a girlfriend. Of course, trouble always finds a Ramsey. Eric’s inquisitor parole officers locate him despite having no official jurisdiction. Jessie gets recruited into Phabian’s ultra-secret counterintelligence agency, Section 74. Yet somehow, everything revolves around a newcomer to this part of the galaxy.

The story of the men and women who drove the Voyager spacecraft mission, told by a scientist who was there from the beginning. The Voyager spacecraft are our farthest-flung emissaries--11.3 billion miles away from the crew who built and still operate them decades after their launch.

Sometimes my life doesn't feel real to me. It's so different - infinitely better - than anything I had on Earth. I'm not running or hiding or afraid anymore. I'm not dealing with the trauma of my past. I'm not alone because I have Lorne. Every time I look into his eyes, everything else fades away - the war, the fight ahead, the fact that we have so much work to do if we want to win. I see him and I forget that SpaceTech is moving against us, but it's not just me I'm trying to save anymore. It's the Aunare.

Spark is everything and it blooms inside the bodies of Tau City’s young women. Once a decade, in exchange for enough power to keep the city modern and comfortable, a Spark Maiden must be sacrificed to their mysterious tower god in a ritual called The Extraction. Ten Maidens are Chosen, but only one enters the tower as a sacrifice, never to be seen again. The nine leftovers are elevated to celebrity status and spend the next decade living in the luxurious Maiden Tower, wearing couture gala gowns, and partying with the city’s most interesting and beautiful people.

Project Gemini is a neglected part of the US space program. Sandwiched between the excitement of Project Mercury and the sending of the first American astronauts to space and the euphoria of the Apollo Moon landings, Gemini was a step forward rather than a dramatic leap. However, this project achieved many important firsts, including the first spacewalk, the first rendezvous and docking between two spacecraft, the first flights of more than one week’s duration, and many more.

Human exploration of Mars is the most ambitious and exciting scientific goal of the 21st century. Few people know as much about this fascinating planet as Dr. Larry Crumpler. As one of the long-term planning leads for the Mars Exploration Rover Project, he helped control the daily communications between NASA and the rovers.

A compelling look inside the Space Shuttle missions that helped lay the groundwork for the Space Age, Shuttle, Houston explores the determined personalities, technological miracles, and 11th-hour saves that have given us human spaceflight. Relaying stories of missions (and their grueling training) in vivid detail, Paul Dye, NASA's longest-serving flight director, examines the split-second decisions that the directors and astronauts were forced to make in a field where mistakes are unthinkable and errors led to the loss of national resources - and more importantly one's crew.

A routine resupply stop takes a terrifying turn when the crew of the Arete realize they're unable to access astral space. Now, intelligence services across the galaxy are realizing that the advanced haathee vessel is trapped in realspace and unable to flee. Now, Captain Jessie Ramsey has to play the less enviable role in a game of cat and mouse. Her ship is tough, great in a fight, but there's only so much she can handle at once.

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.

All that remains of human civilization is a fledgling colony on Concordia, a planet light years from Earth. Infighting and disaster dogged the colony's earliest days, but through the determination and bravery of a few individuals, the remnants of humankind have clung to existence. One of the grittiest of these characters is Cherry Lindstrom. A farmer turned freedom fighter, she helped to lead the generational colonists rebellion. Now she must travel to the Galactic Assembly and persuade the leading powers to accept humans into their alliance.