Heroes of the Space Age ― Incredible Stories of the Famous and Forgotten Men and Women Who Took Humanity to the Stars

A NASA insider tells the exciting story of the people, some well-known but many unrecognized, who were responsible for so many daring space missions.

Award-winning science writer Rod Pyle profiles the remarkable pilots, scientists, and engineers whose work was instrumental in space missions to every corner of our solar system and beyond. Besides heralded names like Neil Armstrong, John Glenn, and Gene Kranz, the author highlights some of the "hidden figures" who played crucial roles in the success of NASA, Soviet, and international space exploration.

For example, Joe Engle, was a daring test pilot who set multiple records in the dangerous X-15 rocket plane and later commanded the space shuttle three times. John Houbolt was an engineer who convinced NASA leadership that the most effective way to land on the moon was to use a seemingly risky technique called "Lunar Orbit Rendezvous," which worried NASA planners but was the only way to make the landing possible by 1969. Margaret Hamilton was an accomplished mathematician and one of the first female software engineers to design programs for spaceflight software that proved critical to the success of the moon landing. John Casani was a brash young engineer who took over the struggling Voyager program to reconnoiter the outer planets at a time when success was far from certain. And Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman to travel into space aboard Soviet spacecraft Vostok 6.

Complemented by many rarely-seen photos and illustrations, these stories of the highly talented and dedicated people, many of whom worked tirelessly behind the scenes, will fascinate and inspire.

Rod Pyle is the author of many books, most recently Interplanetary Robots and the widely acclaimed Amazing Stores of the Space Age; Curiosity: An Inside Look at the Mars Rover Mission and the People Who Made It Happen; and Destination Mars--called "the best recent overview of Mars missions" by the Washington Post. Other books include Destination Moon, Missions to the Moon, Mars: Making Contact, Blueprint for a Battlestar, and Innovation the NASA Way. He is the senior editor for Ad Astra magazine, the official publication of the National Space Society, and writes for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He has produced numerous documentaries for the History Channel and Discovery Communications, including the widely praised Beyond the War of the Worlds and Modern Marvels: Apollo 11. He has also worked in visual effects on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Battlestar Galactica. Pyle has been an assistant professor at the University of La Verne and a lecturer with NASA's Johnson Space Center, and creates award-winning media for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.