Daylight Books to publish `NASA`s Space Shuttle Program 1981-1986` by John A. Chakeres
(Artdaily.org)

In 1961, at the age of eight, John A. Chakeres witnessed an event on television in his third-grade classroom that would have a major impact on his life. Broadcast from Cape Canaveral, Florida, he watched Navy Commander Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr. launch into space aboard the Freedom 7 space capsule, becoming the first American astronaut to make a sub-orbital flight. The excitement of that day never left him, and triggered his interest in photography. He would set his father`s Rolleiflex camera in front of the television set and photograph the space launches. In the 1970s Chakeres embarked on a career as a professional photographer and published several books. When NASA`s Space Shuttle Program started in 1981 with the launch of the first Space Shuttle Columbia, he saw a golden opportunity to combine his love of photography