The latest information on the most important social issues in America today is the hallmark of this well-established series for high school students.

As we reflect in 2016 on the 30th anniversary of the Shuttle Challenger tragedy, it is fitting that we remind ourselves why all of these brave and daring pioneers go into space. From the first unmanned spacecraft to the planned mission to Mars in 2030, this awesome book celebrates the milestone achievements of space travel, the agonizingbut no less importantfailures, and the pioneers who made it happensometimes giving their lives to do it.

The latest information on the most important social issues in America today is the hallmark of this well-established series for high school students.

April 12, 2011 is the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering journey into space. To commemorate this momentous achievement, Springer-Praxis is producing a mini series of books that reveals how humanity’s knowledge of flying, working, and living in space has grown in the last half century. “Tragedy and Triumph” focuses on the 1980s and early 1990s, a time when relations between the United States and the Soviet Union swung like a pendulum between harmony and outright hostility. The glorious achievements of the shuttle were violently arrested by the devastating loss of Challenger in 1986, while the Soviet program appeared to prosper with the last Salyut and the next-generation Mir orbital station. This book explores the continued rivalry between the two superpowers during this period, with each attempting to outdo the other – the Americans keen to build a space station, the Soviets keen to build a space shuttle – and places their efforts in the context of a bitterly divisive decade, which ultimately led them into partnership.

In the words of those who trod the void and others based at mission control, here are more than fifty of the greatest true stories of suborbital, orbital, and deep space exploration. From Apollo 8's first view of a tortured landscape of craters on the "dark side" of the Moon to a series of cliff-hanger crises aboard space station Mir, The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters offers moments of extraordinary heroic achievement as well as episodes of terrible human cost. High points include the classic, nail-biting account of abandoning Apollo 13 on the way to the Moon and Jerry Linenger's panic attack during a space walk where he was "just out there dangling."

"Space exploration represents one of the triumphs of the twentieth century, but its story would be incomplete without looking at the disasters that occurred along the way. Vogt discusses the perils of space flight and relates some of the harrowing escapes and full-fledged calamities that have occurred. Even readers well-versed in NASA history may find new material here, as mishaps from the Soviet space program are related as well. Photographs, including many in color, appear on nearly every double-page spread. Despite the tales of adversity, Vogt encourages readers to remember the many successes in space exploration, commenting, "each failure takes us a stop closer to the stars."--Booklist.

Examines numerous aspects of space exploration. Presents the facts on space exploration's successes and failures, and the questions that surround them.

This compelling story of exploration charts and celebrates humankind in space, from Sputnik's launch in 1957 through the Apollo Moon landings and the International Space Station to future missions to Mars and beyond. Spaceflight chronicles how, in the half-century that followed Sputnik, the world was revolutionized by space travel and exploration. The opening up of Earth's orbit to satellites led to a revolution in communications, monitoring of the environment, and materials science. For the human imagination, the impact has been even greater: the voyages of robotic space probes have transformed our view of the Solar System, while Earth-orbiting satellites and missions to the Moon have forever changed our view of ourselves. This book is a celebration of human ingenuity and imagination. From the work of pioneers like Wernher von Braun, Yuri Gagarin, and Neil Armstrong to the triumphs and tragedies that followed, it reveals the people, science, and technology that have propelled us into the Space Age.