Final Orbit by Chris Hadfield

Published by Mulholland Books on October 7, 2025

Set during Gerald Ford’s brief presidency, Final Orbit gains its thrills from China’s efforts to enter the abandoned Skylab to capture a secret weapon as astronauts from the US and Russia are cooperating in a mission that calls for the docking of an Apollo spacecraft and its Soyuz counterpart. Throw in an attempt to assassinate Ford while he’s visiting NASA in Houston and a Chinese attempt to launch a missile from Russia and you’ve got a conspiracy to turn the Cold War into a Hot Mess.

Kaz Zemeckis accompanies Nixon to China. Kaz is identified as “air crew,” but he’s there to spy for the Air Force Space and Missiles System division. He is accompanied by Dr. Jimmy Doi, an Air Force flight surgeon who speaks Chinese and Japanese. The Chinese assign their own spy, Fang Guojun, to shadow Kaz.

Three years later, Kaz is a military liaison to NASA, serving as the Capsule Communicator (CAPCOM) for a joint Soviet-American mission. The CAPCOM’s job is to talk to the astronauts from Mission Control. A Russian Soyuz vessel docks with an Apollo capsule and their crews exchange pleasantries. That event is taken from history, although the fictional version of the mission is a substantial departure from reality. Chris Hadfield adds a woman to the Russian crew and kills half the astronauts in this alternate history, but the novel’s foundation is based on actual events.

In addition to envisioning an accident that kills some astronauts, Hadfield adds a Chinese plot to board Skylab (the space station by that point had been abandoned) and steal a secret weapon. For plausible reasons, a person connected to the Air Force is working as a spy for China, accounting for China’s knowledge of the secret weapon. The spy’s identity is a bit too obvious.

China’s first manned space mission sends Fang Guojun, now an astronaut, into space to dock with Skylab and steal the weapon. The weapon’s nature is a bit murky, as is the explanation for leaving it on Skylab, but that’s the story.

When the American military detects the Chinese capsule and figures out its intent, the Apollo capsule is instructed to dock with Skylab, ostensibly to offload the dead bodies so that the space shuttle, when finally constructed, can recover them. Of course, a surviving American astronaut must keep the purpose of the diversion a secret from the Russians, lest America’s strongest rival learn about the secret weapon.

The Chinese also scheme to launch a missile from Russia, assuming (apparently correctly) that the American military is easily deceived. That subplot goes nowhere and its purpose is a mystery. An attempt to assassinate Gerald Ford (as if anyone would have noticed), a joint enterprise of the Chinese and America’s Weather Underground (seriously?), also adds little of interest to the story.

The plot is too far-fetched to encourage the willing suspension of disbelief. A scene near the end, when Kaz takes a moment away from his consoles to fight a spy, is a little silly, since the task could have been left to law enforcement. Turning Kaz into an action hero suggests a desperate attempt to add more thrills to the story. In a remarkable coincidence, Kaz also encounters suspicious behavior at a Chinese restaurant that gives him insight into an attempt to set off a bomb at NASA.

Hadfield performs a clever feint at the end, leaving the reader to believe that the story will not have a happy ending. Far be it from me to disclose how the story resolves, although I will caution readers that the story ends a bit too neatly.

Despite my difficulty buying into the story, I enjoyed the technical aspects of spaceflight. Hadfield’s substantial experience as an astronaut informs the story’s detailed background. The tension surrounding the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission gives Final Orbit its thriller status and encouraged my sustained interest in an improbable plot.

RECOMMENDED