Space Mission

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.

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.

When five members of a middle school marching band are accidentally projected into an alternative universe during a field trip to the NASA headquarters, their fates land in the hands of the Multiverse Allied Council: a group of extraterrestrial delegates responsible for preserving harmony across the multiverse. Then Dev, Isaiah, Tessa, Maeve, and Lewis discover that Earth’s destruction is imminent due to an environmental collapse caused by humans. What can they do when their most formidable skill is marching in formation?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Are we alone in the universe? It's a fundamental question for Earth-dwelling humankind. Are there other worlds like ours, out there somewhere? In Hidden in the Heavens, Jason Steffen, a former scientist on NASA's Kepler mission, describes how that mission searched for planets orbiting Sun-like stars—especially Earth-like planets circulating in Earth-like orbits.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The X-wing fighter pilots have earned their reputation as the Rebel Alliance's ultimate strike force by overwhelming enemies with their rapid-fire assaults. But now they are about to embark on a diplomatic mission that will prove to be even more hazardous than all-out combat.

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.

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.

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.

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.