Spaceman: An Astronaut's Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe [Paperback]

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to find yourself strapped to a giant rocket that’s about to go from zero to 17,500 miles per hour?

Or to look back on Earth from outer space and see the surprisingly precise line between day and night? Or to stand in front of the Hubble Space Telescope, wondering if the emergency repair you’re about to make will inadvertently ruin humankind’s chance to unlock the universe’s secrets? Mike Massimino has been there, and inSpacemanhe puts you inside the suit, with all the zip and buoyancy of life in microgravity.

Massimino’s childhood space dreams were born the day Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. Growing up in a working-class Long Island family, he catapulted himself to Columbia and then MIT, only to flunk his first doctoral exam and be rejected three times by NASA before making it through the final round of astronaut selection.

Taking us through the surreal wonder and beauty of his first spacewalk, the tragedy of losing friends in theColumbiashuttle accident, and the development of his enduring love for the Hubble Telescope—which he and his fellow astronauts were tasked with saving on his final mission—Massimino has written an ode to never giving up and the power of teamwork to make anything possible.

Spacemaninvites us into a rare, wonderful world where science meets the most thrilling adventure, revealing just what having “the right stuff” really means.“Every generation of astronauts needs a storyteller -- a person with wit, humor, and passion who has lived our collective dreams of space exploration and returned to tell us all about it. Mike Massimino is that person. He's that astronaut. And this is his story.”—Neil deGrasse Tyson
 
“Mike Massimino writes about space with an astronaut's eye and an engineer's precision. You'll be impressed with his journey and his perspl³.