Siddiqi's first book
Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945-1974 is widely considered to be the best English-language history of the
Soviet space program in print and was identified by
The Wall Street Journal as "one of the five best books" on space exploration. This book was later published in paperback in two separate volumes,
Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge and
The Soviet Space Race with Apollo. Siddiqi's major contribution to space history scholarship has been to apply academic training, theory, and methodology to the study of Soviet space program history. Siddiqi utilized newly available archival materials from Russia, published works such as memoirs, and other sources and essentially pioneered Soviet space history scholarship in the post
Cold War-era. Even current Russian-based space history tends to rely heavily upon memoirs and as a result, Siddiqi is acknowledged by Russian space officials as one of the few people conducting original archival research on the subject worldwide. His articles have been published in the leading Russian space journal
Novosti kosmonavtiki (News of Cosmonautics) as well as the official history journal of the
Russian Academy of Sciences,
Voprosy istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki (Problems in the History of Natural Sciences and Technology). He also regularly publishes pieces in the Moscow English language daily,
Moscow Times. He is a currently serving on the
United States National Research Council's Committee on Human Spaceflight, tasked by Congress to evaluate and recommend options for the future of NASA's human spaceflight program. Siddiqi is also the editor of the series
Rockets and People which are the four volume English-language translation of the memoirs of
Boris Chertok, a leading designer who worked under
Sergei Korolev. These volumes are being published by the
NASA History Division. He was featured in the
NOVA WGBH-TV special
Astrospies broadcast in 2008, and has been featured in various media as a specialist in the history of
spaceflight. He has received the
American Historical Association's Fellowship in
Aerospace history, the
Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award, the
History Manuscript Award from the
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a
National Science Foundation award for work on his Ph.D. dissertation. ==Works==