Laika began her life as a stray dog on the streets of Moscow and died in 1957 aboard the Soviet satellite Sputnik II. Initially the USSR reported that Laika, the first animal to orbit the earth, had survived in space for seven days, providing valuable data that would make future manned space flight possible. People believed that Laika died a painless death as her oxygen ran out. Only in recent decades has the real story become public: Laika died after...

Explores the previously uncelebrated but pivotal contributions of NASA's African-American women mathematicians to America's space program, describing how Jim Crow laws segregated them from their white counterparts despite their groundbreaking successes.

"A witty, deeply researched history of the surprisingly ramshackle Soviet space program, and how its success was more spin than science. In the wake of World War II, with America ascendant and the Soviet Union devastated by the conflict, the Space Race should have been over before it started. But the underdog Soviets scored a series of victories--starting with the 1957 launch of Sputnik and continuing in the years following--that seemed to achieve...

In an alternative version of 1969, the Soviet Union beats the United States to the moon, and the space race continues for decades with still grander challenges and goals.

"Discover the thrilling side of the history of the space race in this fact-tastic, nonfiction Level 3 Ready-to-Read, part of a series about the secrets of American History! Did you know that you can't bring a sandwich on a spaceship? Or that a group of people who had lost their hearing played an important role in the race to send astronauts to the moon? Find out about those true stories and more in this book about the space race of the 1950s and 1960s."--...