ATMOSPHERE

SUMMER 1980‎‎IN THE MONTHS AFTER LEARNING SHE WOULD BE JOINING THE ASTRO-naut corps, Joan did three things.‎‎First, she gave notice at Rice.‎‎On her last day, the Physics and Astronomy Department threw her a going-away party. By the punch bowl, Dr. Siskin asked-in a way that struck Joan as remarkably transparent-how she’d managed to pull this […]

‎SEVEN YEARS EARLIER‎‎JOAN’S YOUNGER SISTER, BARBARA, HAD CALLED HER ONE MORNING TO tell her about a commercial she’d seen on TV late the previous night.‎‎”It said, “This is your NASA.”‎‎”What?” Joan said. She was in her kitchen, pouring herself a cup of coffee, the phone held between her shoulder and her ear. She was about

‎VANESSA FORD HAS HAD BIOMEDICAL SENSORS ALL OVER HER BODY FOR hours. They have been sending her vitals down to the flight surgeon, who monitors every breath she takes. But even well before the elec-trodes were placed on her body, Vanessa has been aware that someone on the ground is always watching.‎‎Mission Control knows everything

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid summary of Atmosphere (2025), a historical-fiction romance set in the 1980s space-shuttle era: — Setting & premise The novel is set in the early 1980s at NASA’s Space Shuttle program. The protagonist is Joan Goodwin—an astronomer turned astronaut‐trainee—who leaves her more comfortable academic life to pursue a higher, riskier calling: