Les Johnson is a physicist and author. With Ben Bova, he is the coauthor of Rescue Mode, and with Travis S. Taylor, he is the coauthor of Back to the Moon and On to the Asteroid. He is the coeditor of the science/science fiction collection Going Interstellar. His first solo novel was Mission to Methone. He was technical consultant for the movies Europa Report and Lost in Space and has appeared on the Discovery Channel series Physics of the Impossible in the “How to Build a Starship” episode. He has also appeared in three episodes of the Science Channel series Exodus Earth. By day, he serves as Solar Sail Principal Investigator of NASA’s first interplanetary solar sail mission and leads research on various other advanced space propulsion technologies at the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.