Astrophysics category: 1588 books

 Our understanding of galaxy formation comes mostly from two sources: sensitive observations at high angular resolution of the high-redshift Universe, where galaxies are observed to be forming, and detailed observations of individual stars and clouds in the Local Group, where telltale remnants from...

“One of the most remarkable accomplishments in our conquest of gravity.” — Sir Arthur C. Clarke   In April, 2003, a company called Scaled Composites introduced SpaceShipOne to the world. SpaceShipOne: An Illustrated History chronicles the development of the world’s first commercial...

Discover what NASA has learned during the last few decades of spacecraft and aircraft flight operations and on-the-ground engineering activities! We've gathered thousands of detailed reports from the NASA Public Lessons Learned System (LLIS). The NASA Lessons Learned system provides access to official,...

Professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction, this NASA report provides a comprehensive history of the X-43A Hyper-X (Hypersonic Experiment) program. In this NASA project, a supersonic combustion ramjet (scramjet) engine was flight tested on a subscale vehicle. The...

This is the first section of the large Volume Two of the report issued by the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident (also known as the Rogers Commission after its chairman, William Rogers). This section includes Appendix E, F, G, H, I, J, and K, including the penetrating...

The Mars Project is a technical specification for a manned mission to Mars that von Braun wrote in 1948. The expected launch date was 1965. He envisioned an "enormous scientific expedition" involving a fleet of ten spacecraft with 70 crew members that would spend 443 days on the surface of Mars before...

The primary objective of this paper is to present an analysis and a historical review of the Apollo Lunar Module landing dynamics from the standpoint of touchdown dynamic stability, landing system energy absorption performance, and evaluation of the first-order terms of lunar soil mechanical properties...

The Apollo program drove the development of spacecraft meteoroid protection in the U.S. and provided the core technology used on succeeding space programs. The uncertain likelihood of a mission-ending collision with a meteoroid and the unknown consequences of a collision with particles at the very...

The Space Exploration Vehicle (SEV) concept is an integral part of NASA's plans for future human space exploration. Each SEV includes a small pressurized cabin to safely sustain two crewmembers for 14 to 28 days. Through suit ports, crewmembers may rapidly egress and ingress the cabin for extravehicular...

The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest man-made structure to orbit Earth and has been conducting research for close to a decade and a half. Yet it is only the latest in a long line of space stations and laboratories that have flown in orbit since the early 1970s. The histories of these...

These American and Soviet Press Kits for the historic 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) mission provide a wealth of information about the mission and the spacecraft - including the first extensive official description of the Soyuz capsule. The introduction states: This document contains...

Volume Four of the report issued by the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident (also known as the Rogers Commission after its chairman, William Rogers) contains the transcripts of hearings conducted from February 6 through February 25, 1986. The report has been professionally...

The fascinating oral histories of twenty-one Apollo lunar program pioneers - converted for accurate flowing-text ebook format reproduction - provide new insights into this extraordinary effort, with vital observations about an era of space history that changed the world. The interviews divulge new...

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration—NASA—was established on July 29, 1958. Ever since that day, NASA has been at the forefront of efforts to explore outerspace, resulting in the Apollo missions to the moon, the Skylab space-station, and today's space shuttle. But behind the...