Space Mission

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.

When Nicole Stott first saw Earth from space, she realized how interconnected we are and knew she had to help protect our planetary home. In Back to Earth, Stott imparts essential lessons in problem-solving, survival, and crisis response that each of us can practice to make change. She knows we can overcome differences to address global issues, because she saw this every day on the International Space Station. Stott shares stories from her spaceflight and insights from scientists, activists, and changemakers working to solve our greatest environmental challenges.

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.

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.

The Apollo space program is the most famous and celebrated in American history, but the first successful landing of men on the moon during Apollo 11 had complicated roots dating back over a decade, and it also involved one of NASA’s most infamous tragedies.

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?

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.

Carl Ramsey has done the unthinkable: he turned down a lucrative job. When the deed is too despicable even for outlaws like the Mobius crew, someone nasty had to be behind it. Carl and his friends decide to hunt down their potential employer and turn him over to the authorities. But as amateur vigilantes, they mire themselves in a moral quagmire of conflicts of interest. With victory (and a tidy payday) in their sights, can they live with the awful truth they uncover?

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.

A simple pickup and delivery. No questions asked; no looking inside the cargo. All it requires is a fast, stealthy ship and a crew who can keep their imaginations and consciences in check until the drop-off. The Mobius is up to the task, but when the crew can't control their curiosity, they're faced with a moral dilemma. Do they cut their losses? Contact the authorities? Take the money and run?

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.

This action-packed sequel finds middle school band geeks Dev, Isaiah, Tessa, Maeve, and Lewis trapped in a parallel version of Earth as they fight to save their families—and the entire rest of the multiverse—from the villainous Empyrean One. Far from home and running out of options, it will take everything they have to get back to Earth and preserve humanity once and for all. The startling revelation that they are their own worst enemies forces a painful decision: Will they forsake the lives they once knew for an uncertain future?

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.

Chris Holt, working in his office at the Space Resources Corporation, discovers that one of the asteroids he is surveying for mining is actually not an asteroid at all but a derelict spaceship. The word gets out and soon the world's powers are competing to explore and claim for themselves the secrets that it holds. What they don't know is that across the galaxy, a war has been underway for millennia. A war between alien civilizations that have very different ideas about what should be done about emerging spacefaring civilizations like our own.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy proposed the nation spend $20 billion to land a man on the Moon before the end of the decade. Based on eyewitness accounts and newly discovered archival material, Chasing the Moon reveals the unknown stories of the fascinating individuals whose imaginative work across decades culminated in America’s momentous achievement. More than a story of engineers and astronauts, the moon landing - now celebrating its 50th anniversary - grew out of the dreams of science fiction writers, filmmakers, military geniuses, and rule-breaking scientists.

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.

On the morning of January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger launched for the 10th time, beginning mission STS-51-L. Space shuttles had already successfully completed 24 missions, and no American spacecraft had ever failed to reach orbit during an official mission.

Adam and his crew are faced with the ultimate challenge: to save the Milky Way Galaxy from the Nuorean invaders. This time their backup will be two-and-a-half MILLION light-years away. They knew this could be a one-way trip, but the stakes were too high not to try. Someone had to step up and be the hero, and Adam's eclectic mix of humans and aliens have been there before. Yet even in victory, they could lose, trapped in a far, distant galaxy with no way to get home. But first things first, Adam Cain and the gang have to cut off the Nuoreans' link to the Milky Way before it's too late.

Esper and Kubu take an outlaw vacation to a remote planet whose tiny colony seems idyllic. It’s far enough for the Convocation wizards dogging them to lose their trail. The plan is simple: Stay out of trouble, let the heat die down, and slink back quietly to civilized space. But these two aren’t good at keeping out of trouble. Before long, they’re exposed to the rotten core beneath this purported utopia. Bitter feuds lurk just below the surface. Feigned friendships mask deadly rivalries. Cliques control what passes for a government on the colony.

Today, the Space Race is widely viewed poignantly and fondly as a race to the Moon that culminated with Apollo 11 "winning" the race for the United States. In fact, it encompassed a much broader range of competition between the Soviet Union and the United States that affected everything from military technology to successfully launching satellites that could land on Mars or orbit other planets in the solar system. Moreover, the notion that America "won" the Space Race at the end of the 1960s overlooks just how competitive the Space Race actually was in launching people into orbit.