Piers Bizony 
NASA Space Shuttle 
40th Anniversary

Written and curated by recognized historians of space exploration, NASA Space Shuttle: 40th Anniversary is the authoritative photo history of the iconic space program.



Officially known as the Space Transportation System (STS), the Space Shuttle program operated from 1981 to 2011. During that time, five Shuttle systems took part in 135 missions under the operation of NASA. This approach—namely reusable spacecraft—revolutionized space exploration.
NASA Space Shuttle: 40th Anniversary traces the STS’s 30-year operational history.
Essays by former NASA chief historian Roger Launius are accompanied by a collection of
incredible Shuttle photography and imagery  mined from the depths of
NASA’s archives by aerospace historian Piers Bizony—all of it presented in
large-format color .



Readers will witness the pre-1981 evolution, the missions, astronauts, ground personnel and infrastructure, and amazing accomplishments of the Shuttle program and its spacecraft:
Columbia ,
Challenger ,
Discovery ,
Atlantis , and
Endeavour . From the launch site at Cape Kennedy, Florida, to mission control in Houston, Texas, to the landing site at Edwards Air Force Base, all aspects of Shuttle operation are covered, including key roles in efforts such as the
Hubble Telescope and International Space Station , as well as the tragedies of
Challenger and Columbia disasters .



Every carefully chosen image in
NASA Space Shuttle: 40th Anniversary tells an aspect of the Shuttle story. The resulting book is not only a unique view of a key chapter of NASA history—it’s a compelling collection of stunning NASA photography and illustrations.

About the author

Piers Bizony is the author of The Space Shuttle: Celebrating Thirty Years of NASA’s First Space Plane and One Giant Leap: Apollo 11 Remembered, both from Zenith Press. He has written about science, aerospace, and cosmology for a wide variety of magazines in the United Kingdom and the United States. His previous books include 2001: Filming the Future, The Rivers of Mars, Starman (a biography of Yuri Gagarin), and Space: 50, marking the fiftieth anniversary of Sputnik.