The NASA Archives: From Project Mercury To the Mars Rovers: 60 Years in Space
(By Piers Bizony)
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Journey through the U.S. space program’s fascinating pictorial history
On October 1, 1958, the world’s first civilian space agency opened for business as an emergency response to the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik a year earlier. Within a decade, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, universally known as NASA, had evolved from modest research teams experimenting with small converted rockets into one of the greatest technological and managerial enterprises ever known, capable of sending men to the moon aboard gigantic rockets and of dispatching robot explorers to Venus, Mars, and worlds far beyond. In spite of occasional, tragic setbacks in NASA’s story, the Apollo moon project remains a byword for American ingenuity; its winged space shuttles spearheaded the International Space Station and its dazzling array of astronomical satellites, robotic landers, and earth sciences programs have transformed our understanding of the cosmos, and our home world’s fragile place within it.
Throughout NASA’s 60-year history, images have played a central role. Who today is not familiar with the Hubble Space Telescope’s mesmerizing views of the universe, or the pin-sharp panoramas of Mars from NASA’s surface rovers? And who could forget the photographs of men walking on the moon?
Researched and edited in collaboration with NASA, this collection gathers more than 500 historic photographs and rare concept renderings, scanned and re-mastered using the latest technology, and reproduced with black matte borders that protect the pages from fingerprints. Texts by science and technology journalist Piers Bizony, former NASA chief historian Roger Launius, and best-selling Apollo historian Andrew Chaikin round out this comprehensive exploration of NASA, spanning from its earliest days to its current development of new space systems for the future.
The NASA Archives is more than just a fascinating pictorial history of the U.S. space program. It is also a profound meditation on why we choose to explore space, and how we will carry on this grandest of all adventures in the years to come.”
