The fascinating story of how NASA sent humans to explore outer space, told through a treasure trove of documents from the NASA archives–publishing in celebration of NASA’s 60th anniversary and with a foreword by Bill Nye.

Among all the technological accomplishments of the last century, none has captured our imagination more deeply than the movement of humans into outer space. From Sputnik to SpaceX, the story of that journey is told as never before in The Penguin Book of Outer Space Exploration.

Renowned space historian John Logsdon has uncovered the most fascinating items in the NASA archive and woven them together with expert narrative guidance to create a history of how Americans got to space and what we’ve done there. Beginning with rocket genius Wernher von Braun’s vision for voyaging to Mars, and closing with Elon Musk’s contemporary plan to get there, this volume traces major events like the founding of NASA, the first American astronauts in space, the moon landings, the Challenger disaster, the daring Hubble Telescope repairs, and more. In these pages, we find such gems as Eisenhower’s reactions to Sputnik, the original NASA astronaut application, John Glenn’s reflections on zero gravity, Kennedy’s directives to go to the moon, discussions on what Neil Armstrong’s first famous first words should be, customs forms filled out by astronauts bringing back moon rocks, transcribed conversations with Nixon on ending Project Apollo and beginning the space shuttle program, and so much more.