"Tom Swift and His Rocket Ship" (The New Tom Swift Jr. Adventures, Book 3) by Victor Appleton II

The third volume of the new Tom Swift Jr. series takes the brilliant young inventor into outer space in a rocket ship of his own design. On Fearing Island just off the Atlantic Coast, Tom's spacecraft project attracts the attention of the spies and agents of a foreign scientist whose plan is to rule the world and space. Tom Swift's advantage over his competitors is that he has perfected a rocket fuel that can carry his ship into and out of orbital flight. But it takes all of Tom and Bud's ingenuity to outwit the ruthless efforts of the foreign scientist and his desperate gang of henchmen. The flight through space makes thrilling reading--the more exciting because you know the details of the flight are scientifically accurate. Readers of Tom Swift and His Flying Lab, the first book of this new series, will recall the message that came in the shape of a meteor-like object falling into the Swift plane enclosure. In this story, another message from the same mysterious source proves very valuable to Tom as he is flying through space.