You picked up this book because you love space and are tired of the same five facts in every article, or because you host quiz nights, teach kids, or simply want to be the one who knows what really happened on the way to the Moon. Maybe you grew up watching launches and want a single book that holds the details the documentaries leave out. Whatever brought you here, this treasury of real stories from real NASA missions, checked against the agency's own records, is arranged so the facts actually stick in your memory.
This is not a textbook, and it is not a dry list of dates and acronyms, and it is not a collection of made-up quotes or invented statistics. It is 500 true stories, from the frightened man who first orbited Earth in a tiny capsule to the helicopters that flew on Mars, and every story is told the way you would tell it at a dinner table, with the why behind the what. You will learn why the first American astronaut stepped out of the lander first, why a tree on Earth once flew around the Moon, why a probe carries a gold record toward the stars, and why the fastest humans who ever traveled were three men on their way home from a dress rehearsal.
Inside, you'll discover:
• The Mercury flight that almost ended in fire, and the sensor that lied
• The Apollo 13 rescue, and the duct tape that saved three lives
• The Moon trees, the golf ball, and the last footprints on the lunar dust
• Why Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to visit Uranus and Neptune
• The volcanoes of Io, the geysers of Triton, and the ocean under Europa
• The Parker probe that touches the Sun at 430,000 miles per hour
• The telescopes that looked back 13 billion years, and what they found
By the final page you will have a working memory full of facts you can actually use, because each one is attached to a story. Space history is wild enough without exaggeration, and this book tells it honestly, so the next time the conversation turns to the cosmos, you will be the one everyone turns to.

Alex Hofman

Books