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Established news and explainer site covering spaceflight and astronomy. It reports on crewed and robotic missions, launches, space agencies, telescopes and night-sky events, and publishes background features that help readers follow current exploration programmes and understand their scientific goals.
More resources on Space Exploration
The Space Show
Long-running interview talk show hosted by David Livingston with engineers, entrepreneurs, policy experts and scientists. Discussions cover commercial spaceflight, space tourism, launch economics, space policy and exploration plans, giving listeners context on how the space industry and its debates are evolving.
A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts
Chaikin's narrative history of the Apollo missions, drawn from interviews with 23 of the 24 astronauts who flew to the Moon. Covers Apollo 8 through 17 mission by mission, including flight-plan detail, crew dynamics and lunar surface science.
Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants
A propellant chemist's firsthand account of the Cold War search for liquid rocket fuels, with a foreword by Isaac Asimov. Explains why engineers settled on hydrogen, kerosene and hypergolics, and what made candidates like chlorine trifluoride unusable despite excellent performance.
Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945-1974 (NASA SP-2000-4408)
Asif Siddiqi's 1,000-page history of the Soviet space program, published free by NASA. Built from post-Soviet archives, it documents Korolev's design bureaus, the N1 lunar rocket failures and the political decisions behind Sputnik, Vostok and Soyuz. Corrects the US-centric picture.
Chariots for Apollo: A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft (NASA SP-4205)
NASA's official engineering history of the Apollo spacecraft, free from the technical reports server. Traces the command, service and lunar modules from 1957 through Apollo 11, including the lunar-orbit-rendezvous decision, contractor management and the Apollo 1 fire. The history pick that is actually about engineering decisions rather than personalities — mode selection, weight growth, subcontractor failure, test discipline after the pad fire.
Fundamentals of Astrodynamics: Second Edition
The U.S. Air Force Academy's astrodynamics text, revised in a second edition. Derives two-body motion, orbit determination, Lambert's problem, ballistic missile and lunar/interplanetary trajectories from Newtonian mechanics, with worked problems that let you actually compute transfers and delta-v budgets.