"They said it would never be found. Not only did Curt Newport find it, he raised it from under three miles of water during the deepest commercial salvage operation in history. ‘It,’ was astronaut Gus Grissom’s famed Liberty Bell Mercury spacecraft, lost at sea on July 21, 1961 during America’s second manned space mission in an incident destined to pass into space lore, only to be resurrected during two harrowing undersea expeditions in the summer of 1999.

"Lost Spacecraft describes the exploration of two unique and dangerous environments – space and the deep ocean – and how the paths of two men, one living and one dead, crossed in the recovery of the Liberty Bell 7 spacecraft. Beginning with Grissom’s childhood and later selection into the astronaut corps, Lost Spacecraft details the history of Project Mercury, the creation of the Mercury spacecraft , Grissom’s ill-fated Mercury-Redstone mission, and developments in undersea technology, as well as author Curt Newport’s 14 year long obsession to raise the sunken space-age Titanic from the abyss.

"Long resigned by space historians as being ‘lost and gone forever,’ and against staggering odds, Newport’s team managed to find the phone booth-sized space vehicle during their unprecedented expedition, only to see success slip through their fingers. Working in water depths equal to the height of 28 Washington Monuments and using a new underwater vehicle built in only 60 days, Newport returned Liberty Bell 7 to Cape Canaveral, Florida 38 years to the day after Grissom blasted off from his tiny launch pad.

Including numerous photographs, many never before published, Lost Spacecraft is a tale of bravery during the early exploration of space and how one man’s determination rescued a priceless artifact of the space program from certain destruction in the deep ocean.