Robert C. Trevino

The first edition of "Walking to Olympus: An EVA Chronology" (Monograph in Aerospace History #7, October 1997) spanned a period of space exploration of 32 years, from the first spacewalks in 1965 to the end of the Shuttle-Mir program in 1997. It included EVAs performed by both Soviet/Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts. The Soviet/Russian space programs that involved spacewalks were the Voskhod, Soyuz, Salyut, Mir, and Shuttle-Mir. During this same time period, the USA space programs that included spacewalks were Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Space Shuttle, and the Shuttle-Mir. This second volume of Walking to Olympus continues from the end of the Shuttle-Mir pro-gram in 1997 to the end of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011. It includes not only spacewalks performed by American and European astronauts and the Russian/Soviet cosmonauts, but also those of the newest members of the EVA com-munity, the taikonauts of the People's Republic of China (Chinese taikonauts performed their first spacewalk on 27 September 2008). Space programs with EVAs that are included in this second volume are: the Mir and the International Space Station (ISS) programs (Russia), the Space Shuttle and the ISS programs (USA), and the Shenzhou space program (China).

Black & White print. Following the first volume of Walking to Olympus: An EVA Chronology, which recounted the period from the first spacewalks in 1965 to the end of the Shuttle-Mir program in 1997, this second volume of Walking to Olympus spans the period from 1997 to the end of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011. It includes not only spacewalks performed by American and European astronauts and the Russian/Soviet cosmonauts, but also those of the newest members of the EVA community, the taikonauts of the People's Republic of China. Several key events and themes from this period include the building of the ISS, the servicing of the Hubble Space Telescope, and the STS-107 Columbia accident. The publication of this second EVA chronology follows two major anniversaries of significance to the spaceflight community: the 50th anniversary of the first EVA and the 25th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope. The phrase "Walking to Olympus" is a symbolic expression of humans inevitably landing on Mars and exploring the planet, including Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in our solar system.