Category: Nonfiction Reviewed by: Casey Suire Title: NASA’s Discovery Program: The First Twenty Years of Competitive Planetary Exploration Author: Susan Niebur, with David W. Brown Format: Hardcover/Paperback/Kindle/free PDF from NASA Pages: 444 Publisher: NASA History Division Date: January 2024 Retail price: $55.08/$13.06/$0.99/Free ISBN: 979-8876271341 Last October, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft departed Earth. After a gravity assist from Mars in 2026, this robotic explorer is expected to reach its destination, the metallic asteroid 16 Psyche, in August 2029. Psyche is the latest mission in NASA ..read more

The National Space Society invites you to the next Space Forum Thursday, May 2, 2024, 9:00 pm to 10:15 pm EDT From Campus to the Cosmos: The EagleCam Adventure Register for this Space Forum with Vikas PatelUndergraduate StudentEmbry-Riddle Aeronautical University2023 Astronaut Scholar   Join us for an informative space forum to learn about an ambitious student-led project aiming to capture the first lunar landing selfie. In 2019, Intuitive Machines (IM) co-founder and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) alumnus Steve Altemus challenged ERAU students to engineer this out-of-this-w ..read more

Category: Nonfiction Reviewed by: Peter SpasovTitle: The Music of Space: Scoring the Cosmos in Film and TelevisionAuthor: Chris CarberryFormat: Paperback/Kindle Pages: 307 Publisher: McFarland & Company Date: March 2024 Retail Price: $39.95\$19.49 ISBN:  978-1476688978 Find this book When people first told stories of space in moving pictures, music played a key role. Some soundtracks have invoked the profound within us, such as gazing upon the Earth and our Sun rising up from behind the Moon whenever we hear the opening of Richard Strauss’ tone poem, Also sprach Zarathustra, the iconi ..read more

Dr. Pascal Lee, a planetary scientist with the SETI Institute and NASA Ames, founder of the Mars Institute and a professor of planetary science at Kepler Space University, will speak at the National Space Society’s 2024 International Space Development Conference® (ISDC®), held from May 23-26, 2024, in Los Angeles, California. Dr. Lee’s principal talk will focus on the recent discovery of a huge Martian volcano, the first new geological find of this magnitude since the other major volcanoes on Mars were discovered in the early 1970s. Lee and his research associate, Sourabh Shubham, who is a gra ..read more

Space Entrepreneur and Founding CTO of Relativity Space to Discuss the Newspace Enterprise Jordan Noone, General Partner of Embedded Ventures and founding CTO of rocket company Relativity Space, will join the roster of preeminent speakers at the National Space Society’s 2024 International Space Development Conference® (ISDC®), which will be presented at the LAX Sheraton Gateway Hotel from May 23-26 in Los Angeles, CA. Noone is the Co-Founder and a General Partner at Embedded Ventures, a next generation venture capital firm investing in early-stage deep tech startups. The firm invests in pre-se ..read more

Photo: Gibson’s first shuttle mission was the first to land at Kennedy Space Center. Credit: NASA By Robin Scott Robert “Hoot” Gibson is not only a great NASA astronaut, he is also a great storyteller. On January 8 he provided the Iowa Chapter with unique insights from his outstanding career both as a Navy pilot and space shuttle astronaut. His talk to the Iowa Chapter can be seen online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQly6A_nDcQ. Gibson’s mom and dad both flew planes, providing him with an inspiring environment. He achieved his childhood dream ..read more

Category: Nonfiction Reviewed by: Peter Spasov Title: Alien Earths: The New Science of Planet Hunting in the CosmosAuthor: Lisa KalteneggerFormat: Hardcover, Kindle Pages: 288 Publisher: St. Martin’s Press Date: April 2024 Retail Price: $30.00/$14.99 ISBN:  978-1250283634 Find this book In Alien Earths, Kaltenegger’s aim is to answer whether we are alone in the cosmos. Although the author does not reply with a definitive yes or no, she offers a multitude of maybes about how life could exist elsewhere. When we pursue our goal of becoming an interplanetary species, it is of interest to lear ..read more

Category: Children’s Books Reviewed by: Susan RaizerTitle: An Unlikely Astronaut Author: Susan Kilrain with Francis FrenchIllustrator: Becky Hardy Age Range: 5-8 years Format: Hardcover/Kindle Pages: 32 Publisher: Book Press Publishing Date: October 2023 Retail Price: $19.95/$8.95 ISBN-13: 978-1947305731 Find this book Former astronaut Susan Kilrain never let the obstacles placed before her to discourage a childhood desire to one day pilot the Space Shuttle. She, along with her co-author Francis French, have written a book describing the path to achieving a goal that, for many in our society a ..read more

Former Astronaut was the Subject of the Amazon Hit Movie A Million Miles Away Former NASA astronaut and STEM advocate Jose Hernandez will give a keynote speech at the National Space Society’s 2024 International Space Development Conference® (ISDC®), as well as addressing youth attending the conference’s STEM sessions. Hernandez followed a unique path into his career as an astronaut. Growing up as the son of migrant farmworkers in Central California, his hopes of going into space seemed an impossible reach, but his father encouraged him to work toward his dreams. Despite moving from town to tow ..read more

The National Space Society is pleased to announce Melissa Navia, who portrays Lieutenant Ortegas in “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” will be the host of the 2024 International Space Development Conference® (ISDC®). The ISDC will be held on May 23-26, 2024, in Los Angeles, California at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel at LAX. Though best known for her work on “Star Trek,” early in her career, Navia started in feature films starting in 2011. By 2013 she had won the Best Actress Award at the Wild Rose Independent Film Festival for her role in “The Paragon Cortex.” Her work in television includes a rec ..read more