Orbit of Discovery: The All-Ohio Space Shuttle Mission

The desire to beat gravity is a Buckeye tradition. After all, Orville and Wilbur Wright were Dayton, Ohio, boys who went to Kitty Hawk in 1903 to get things off the ground. When space became the next frontier, John Glenn, who was born in Cambridge, Ohio, on July 18, 1921, became the first American to orbit the earth in his Friendship 7 spacecraft. A Wapakoneta, Ohio, resident, Neil Armstrong, born in 1930, followed in the footsteps of Glenn by being the first human to step onto the moon's surface during the summer of 1969. Don Thomas, a Cleveland native, saw other Ohioans in space and set his sights on becoming an astronaut. After years of hard work and dedication, he became part of the 1995 All-Ohio space shuttle Discovery mission. Orbit of Discovery provides a first-hand account of this mission. Written by Thomas with the assistance of journalist, Mike Bartell, the book is a lively and entertaining must read for individuals who want to experience a ride into space. Orbit of Discovery is augmented with a foreword by astronaut and Senator John Glenn and an introduction by Senator George Voinovich.

Don Thomas was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and joined NASA in 1988 as a materials engineer working on the space shuttle program. In 1990, he was selected in NASA's thirteenth group of astronauts. He is a veteran of four space shuttle missions, completing nearly seven hundred orbits of the Earth and traveling over seventeen million miles during his twenty-year career with NASA. Additional information about the STS-70 mission can be found at OhioAstronaut.com. Mike Bartell, a lifelong resident of Toledo, Ohio, covered numerous space shuttle missions during his award-winning thirty-five-year career as a reporter and editor at The Blade in Toledo. He also taught journalism at the University of Toledo for more than thirty years.