Curtis Peebles was an aerospace historian for the Smithsonian Institution and freelance writer since 1977.

He has written 11 books, Battle for Space and, Guardians: Strategic Reconnaissance Satellites (1987), Watch the Skies! (1995), High Frontier: The U.S. Air Force and the Military Space Program and, The Corona Project: America's First Spy Satellites (1997), Asteroids: A History (2000), Shadow Flights: America's Secret Airwar Against the Soviet Union (2001), Dark Eagles: A History of the Top Secret U.S. Aircraft (2003), Twilight Warriors: Covert Air Operations Against the USSR (2005) and Road to Mach 10: Lessons Learned from the X-43a Flight Research Program (2008).

Also he was written more than forty articles on various aspects of Cold War aerospace history. He received a Bachelor of Arts in History from the California State University, Long Beach in 1985. Peebles is a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society, a member of the Flight Test Historical Foundation and a frequent lecturer at conferences and symposiums on aviation history.

Since November 2000 he has been working at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center history office.

His third book "The Moby Dick Project: Reconnaissance Balloons over Russia" published in 1991 by Smithsonian Books, is unanimously considered the first and best account of the futile efforts made by the United States to spy the Soviet Union using balloons in the 50's.

He died on June 25, 2017.