The world had been fascinated with astronauts and spaceflight since well before the first crewed launches in 1961, when Yuri Gagarin, Alan Shepard, and John Glenn became household names. But when Alexei Leonov of the Soviet Union exited his spacecraft in March of 1965, a new era in spaceflight began. And when Ed White, clad in his gleaming space suit with a large American flag on his left shoulder, eased himself outside his Gemini spacecraft later that year, Americans too had a new space hero. They also learned a new acronym: EVA, short for extravehicular activity, more commonly known as “spacewalking.”

Though few understood the tremendous risks White was taking in his twenty-two-minute space walk, Americans watched with immense pride and patriotism as White, tethered to Gemini 4, propelled himself around the spacecraft with a pressurized oxygen-fueled zip gun. But White’s struggle to fit his space-suited body back inside the claustrophobic Gemini spacecraft and close the hatch confirmed what NASA should have known: spacewalking wasn’t easy.

More than fifty years and hundreds of space walks later, the art of EVA has evolved. The first space walks, preparation for walking on the moon, intended to prove that humans could function in raw space inside their own miniature spacecraft-a space suit. After the end of the lunar program, both the Americans and Soviets turned their focus to long-duration flights on space stations in low Earth orbit, and space walks were crucial to the success of these missions. The construction of the International Space Station-the most sophisticated spacecraft to date-required hundreds of hours of work by spacewalkers from many countries.

In Into the Void John Youskauskas and Melvin Croft tell the unique story of those who have ventured outside the spacecraft into the unforgiving vacuum of space as we set our sights on the moon, Mars, and beyond.
 

“Working in a space suit in hard vacuum is likely the most demanding test of an astronaut’s physical skills and mental concentration. Into the Void reveals in fascinating detail how spacewalkers, flight controllers, and suit engineers mastered this difficult art to explore the moon, recover crippled spacecraft, and build an expansive space station on the high frontier. Lock your helmet ring, open chapter 1, and float outside!”-Tom Jones, veteran spacewalker and astronaut and author of Space Shuttle Stories “Into the Void helps us experience the high-stakes, awe-inspiring, and pressure-laden realm of space walks, where intrepid humans dare to leave behind the safety of their spacecraft for critical work that can only be accomplished in the unforgiving void.”-Jonathan H. Ward, coauthor of Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars and Bringing Columbia Home “Into the Void presents a detailed background of extravehicular activity training and how Murphy’s Law must always be accounted for. The reader will come to understand how the first and only three-person space walk during STS-49, my second spaceflight, was conceived and accomplished.”-Bruce Melnick, mission specialist for space shuttle missions STS-41 and STS-49

John Youskauskas is a commercial pilot for a major fractional jet operator with more than thirty years of experience in flight operations, aviation safety, and maintenance. Melvin Croft has more than forty years of experience as a professional geologist and is a longtime supporter of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. Youskauskas and Croft are coauthors of Come Fly with Us: NASA’s Payload Specialist Program (Nebraska, 2024) and contributors to Footprints in the Dust: The Epic Voyages of Apollo, 1969–1975 (Nebraska, 2010). Jerry Ross is a former NASA astronaut who flew on seven space shuttle missions. He is the author of Spacewalker: My Journey in Space and Faith as NASA’s Record-Setting Frequent Flyer.