This publication "Authoritatively documents the many accomplishments of NASA's Space Shuttle Program from its origins to the present. Beginning with a Foreword by astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen, this compelling book provides clear, accurate, and authentic accounts from NASA's best subject matter experts, including aerospace engineers who worked with the shuttle program, and leading experts from the science and academic communities. The book captures the passion of those who devoted their energies to the program's success for more than three decades. It focuses on their science and...

Each time a space vehicle visits another world it runs the risk of forever changing that extraterrestrial environment. We are surrounded on Earth by a melange of different microorganisms, and if some of these hitchhike onboard a space mission, they could contaminate and start colonies on a different planet. Such an occurrence would irrevocably alter the nature of that world, compromise all future scientific exploration of the body, and possibly damage any extant life on it. And by inadvertently carrying exotic organisms back to Earth on our spacecraft, we risk the release of biohazardous...

Apollo was America's program to land men on the moon and get them safely back to the earth. In May 1961 President Kennedy gave the signal for planning and developing the machines to take men to that body. This decision, although bold and startling at the time, was not made at random nor did it lack a sound engineering base. Subcommittees of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), predecessor of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), had regularly surveyed aeronautical needs and pointed out problems for immediate resolution and specific areas for advanced...