Mars the NASA Mission Reports [With CDROM]

By: Godwin, Robert

Book Overview

CD-ROM and Book. The Red Planet has been a beacon to every race of mankind since the dawn of history. Today Mars stands as a symbol of the high frontier the next logical step in our exploration of the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1896522629
• ISBN13: 9781896522623
• Release Date: June 2000
• Publisher: Apogee Books
• Length: 424 Pages
• Weight: 1.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 7.1" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

Martian Chronicles

This book is a collection of reports from every American Martian probe of the 2oth century, as well as coming attractions for the long running Mars Exploration rover, now known as Spirit and Opportunity. In this age when we routinely receive High Definition pictures from Mars on a daily basis, it is sobering to see that it took the better part of a day to receive just one picture from the early Mariner probes. I would recommend this book for anyone interested in the history of Martian exploration. It is the history of Martian exploration.

A great reference

This book pulls together a ton of publicly available information on the unmanned Mars probes from the United States, tracking the changes in our understanding of the Red Planed. The bonus CD has, among other things, a cool short film starring Carl Sagan, showing the experiments on the Viking landers that were to show whether there is life on Mars.

What a great book!

We're using this as a textbook for a class on the history of Mars exploration. It makes a great supplement to the science articles we've been reading - it is very easy to read.

Space history, and a look at what we missed

It's hard to get more technical, but it's exactly what you need if you want to have a look at the technology that was used to conquer that "final frontier", starting about 40 years ago. It was definitly a time where exploration was risky, and NASA was actually willing to risk it. Those little probes were so rudimentary compared to what we can do now, and yet, they were state-of-the-art machines that were launched one after another to the planets... with equally deceiving and surprising results. When you think that the Viking data is still being used (and the new results are still controversial), it's hard not to be impressed.Ironically, this book, which may have been a tribute to NASA creativeness, ends up with the Mars Observer, Mars Polar Lander and Mars Climate Orbiter reports, three probes that failed. The failure is definitly not the problem, because most of the Mars probes failed. But NASA attitude has dramatically changed since the first Mariner. A failure was merely a plausible outcome, but now, it's a catastrophy that invokes a complete Mars programme reeavaluation...And to kill it completely, this invaluable little book includes the Werner Von Braun infamous roadmap to Mars... envisionned for the 1980's. Another sad hint that NASA failed to its destiny, and will probably never recover.This book shoudl definitly be read with some other good space history books, that will help put the technical prowess in perspective. I would recommend the following:- Failure is Not An Option, by Gene Kranz- Korolev, by James Harford- Russia In Space, by Brian Harvey- Moon Hunters, by Jeffrey Kluger

A treasuretrove!

This is an absolutely indespensable compendium of data relating to the US's unmanned Mars missions starting with the Mariner probes and bringing us right up to 1999's troubling double failures. The text is surprisingly lucid for such a technical document and the data on the missions is exhaustive. The disk features literally hundreds of photos that give the reader an appreciation of how far the imaging technology has come in the past 30 odd years. Reading this volume also makes you appreciate the incredible complexity and challenge of mounting even a small unmanned mission to mars.