As humanity prepares to return to the Moon, there has never been a better time to celebrate the pioneers who first made the journey possible.

July 1969. It had been just over eight years since the flights of Gagarin and Shepard, followed quickly by President Kennedy’s challenge to put a man on the Moon before the decade was out. It was only seven months since NASA made the bold decision to send Apollo 8 all the way to the Moon on the first crewed flight of the massive Saturn V rocket. On the morning of July 16, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins sat atop another Saturn V at Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. The three-stage, 363-foot rocket would use its 7.5 million pounds of thrust to propel them into space and into history.

More than half a century later, the legacy of those pioneering missions continues to inspire a new era of exploration. From the achievements of astronauts such as Tim Peake aboard the International Space Station to NASA’s Artemis missions, commercial lunar landers and ambitious plans to return humans to the Moon and journey onwards to Mars, spaceflight is entering an exciting new chapter.

This fully updated edition celebrates the pioneers who made space exploration possible, while exploring the people, missions and technologies carrying their legacy into the future.