Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules, and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. This book brings to life the stories of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden, four African-American women who lived through the civil rights...

Find out all about NASA in this out-of-this-world addition to the What Was? series. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, better known as NASA, began in 1958. With its creation, the United States hoped to ensure it won the space race against the Soviet Union. Author Sarah Fabiny describes the origins of NASA, the launching of the Apollo program that landed the first human on the moon, and the many missions and discoveries that have taken...

On July 20th, 1969, Neil Armstrong landed gently on the lunar surface and became the first person to set foot on another world. People around the world stopped what they were doing to crowd around television sets and radios to witness one of the greatest achievements in human history-a man walking on the moon. How did we get there? Why haven't we gone back? In The Space Race: How the Cold War Put Humans on the Moon, kids ages 12 to 15 explore the...