Space Mission

Captain Jessie Ramsey has brought the starship Arete to the hostile Eyndar Empire. She and her crew have traded the complexities of the Earth/Mars wars for the open hostility of a species that will shoot them on sight. Their anti-piracy mission has evolved. Rather than simply clearing the star lanes for peaceful merchants and civilian transports, they're going after an illicit trade in sentient laborers. It's all going fine until one of the traffickers they capture reveals the location of a black market space station that makes their own operation look like small potatoes.

On September 11, 1999, humanity made a monumental discovery in the vastness of space. Scientists uncovered an asteroid of immense scientific importance—a colossal celestial entity. As massive as an aircraft carrier and towering as high as the iconic Empire State Building, this cosmic titan was later named Bennu. Remarkable for much more than its size, Bennu belonged to a rare breed of asteroids capable of revealing the essence of life itself. But just as Bennu became a beacon of promise, researchers identified a grave danger.

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.

Legendary "space statesman" Buzz Aldrin speaks out as a vital advocate for the continuing quest to push the boundaries of the universe as we know it. As a pioneering astronaut who set foot on the moon during mankind’s first landing with Apollo 11 - and an aerospace engineer who designed an orbital rendezvous technique critical to future planetary landings - Aldrin has a vision, and in Mission to Mars he plots out the path he proposes, one that will take humans to Mars by 2035.

This ALIEN story begins where most end: with a xenomorph loose on a damaged spaceship hurtling through space. Once a highly decorated marine, Chris Temple, a recently widowed single father to two young daughters, Jane, 11, and Emma, 8, is onboard. Despite his particular set of skills, Chris doesn’t get involved in the fight with the alien, instead focusing on keeping his children safe as the ship comes in for a crash landing.

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.

The hunt for captive humans still held in Eyndar Empire space has hit a wall. Captain Jessie Ramsey's assault on Outpost 71 resulted in the liberation of hundreds but little in the way of leads. But what if dark magic could find more? Wouldn't the benefit outweigh the harm? And what if that dark magic was chronomancy? And what if that chronomancy was wielded by the galaxy's least responsible wizard, Eric Ramsey? Still willing to give it a try? Still worth the risk?

One last mission. It's a promise familiar to Captain John Duggan. Each final battle has another following it, with another after that. They come to him with the inevitability of death. His latest task seems no different to the others before it. As events progress, Duggan begins to believe - he starts to see how his life might change at the end of it and how the lives of billions in the Confederation may be saved if he succeeds. This time, his superiors plan no less than the destruction of the Helius Blackstar itself.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Earth is rising in the House of Voltar.... And there’ll be hell to pay! That’s right. The invasion is on...and it’s coming soon to a galaxy near you. The action couldn’t be hotter, and the plot couldn’t be more diabolical. Earth is coming to Voltar - and the Voltarians won’t know what hit them. Murder, blackmail, drugs, psychoanalysis, PR firms, sex-crazed teenyboppers, riots in the streets, women in chains. These are the powerful secret weapons of war.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When scientists discovered the first ocean beyond Earth, they had two big questions: “Is it habitable?” and “How do we get there?” To answer the first, they had to answer the second, and so began a vivacious team’s twenty-year odyssey to mount a mission to Europa, the ocean moon of Jupiter. Standing in their way: NASA, the White House, Congress, rivals in academia, and even Jupiter itself. Written with verve, humor, and uncanny empathy, The Mission is an exuberant masterclass in how a few determined cogs can change an entire machine.

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.