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Millions of viewers watched in fascination as the Mars Sojourner rover
maneuvered around the Red Planet's surface like an interplanetary dune buggy, sending back
pictures of rocks and boulders. The books and CD-ROMs below detail that incredible mission
plus other missions to Mars before and since the Pathfinder mission including the Spirit
and Opportunity roving robots.
Combining the journey of a young scientist with the history of NASA's Mars space program, Roving Mars offers a dramatic account of one of the most amazing adventures of our time. In an incredibly conversational and compelling voice, Squyres manages to go into detail about how the MER mission was born, covering the politics, mistakes, and confusion that ensued. He doesn't shy away from the technical aspects of the mission, but presents them in a way that is accessible to the most un-scientifically minded among us. The author leads us through the exhausting and exhilarating race to get the rovers to the launch pad in time - and finally, the amazing story of Spirit's and Opportunity's journeys to Mars and what they found there. |
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Spirit has endured a communications breakdown and a troublesome rear wheel, but Opportunity quickly found geological evidence for the existence of water millions of years ago. Squyres relates the toll that monitoring the rovers took on his colleagues. The Martian day is 39 minutes longer than a day on Earth, so the team had to reset their watches and their internal clocks to work, eat and sleep like Martians.
Between Mariner 4 and Mars Global Surveyor in 1998 the United States has sent a fleet of robots to Mars with wildly varying degrees of success. Thanks to these versatile probes we now know almost as much about Mars on a global scale as we do about our own Earth. In Mars The NASA Mission Reports the triumphs and tribulations of the American Mars program is gathered together in one place. Press Kits and Mission Reports from every Mars mission are collected together for the first time. Reading these documents presented here in chronological order gives a fascinating insight into how our understanding of the Red planet has grown over the past four decades. These robot voyages are the advance guard, scouting out the path for the day when men will launch a manned mission to Mars. Includes: Windows CD-ROM featuring: The following complete NASA special publications: The Difficult Road To Mars - Mars Exploration In The Soviet Union, On Mars 1958-1978, Mariner Mars 1964 Final Project Report, Mariner 6 & 7 Pictures Of Mars, The New Mars The Discoveries Of Mariner 9, Viking Mission To Mars, Viking Orbiter Views Of Mars, EMPIRE - Background & Initial Dual-Planet Mission Studies NASA movies in MPG video format: Planet Mars, 19 Minutes To Earth and Mars - The Search Begins.
Boyce draws his clear explanations of Mars's atmosphere, climate, surface, and interior from the monumental findings of the different NASA missions. Beginning with Mariner 4 in 1964 and continuing through the 2001 Mars Odyssey probe, each spacecraft sent to Mars yielded fascinating new discoveries (how did those "canals" come to be?) and occasionally overturned earlier findings--especially when trying to answer NASA's ultimate question, "Are we alone?" The search for life on Mars seemed to be over after the 1976 Viking mission, but in 1997 scientists announced that they had found possible traces of ancient life in the ALH84001 Martian Meteorite, sparking furious debates in scientific journals. That controversy is precisely why Boyce finds Mars so endlessly fascinating--you just never know.
The detailed explanations of the rover's construction, the launch and landing of the Pathfinder lander on Mars, and the work done by Sojourner are fascinating. Stunning photographs, the majority in color, add additional details and clarity to the lively text, which is easy to read but does not talk down to readers. A time line of Mars voyages, a chart comparing Earth and Mars, and web sites are also included.
Donna Shirley's 35-year career as an aerospace engineer reached a jubilant pinnacle in July 1997 when Sojourner -- the solar-powered, self-guided, microwave-oven-sized rover -- was seen exploring the Martian landscape in Pathfinder's spectacular images from the surface of the red planet. The event marked a milestone in space exploration -- no vehicle had ever before roamed the surface of another planet. But for Donna Shirley, the manager of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars Exploration Program who headed the mostly male team that designed and built Sojourner, it marked a triumph of another kind. Since her childhood in Oklahoma, Shirley had dreamed of traveling to Mars, and, through Pathfinder, she did just that.
Mars CD-ROMs
Every aspect of the program is covered: NASA's twin robot geologists, the Mars Exploration Rovers, were launched toward Mars in 2003 in search of answers about the history of water on Mars. The Mars Exploration Rover mission is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the red planet. The program seeks to take advantage of each launch opportunity to go to Mars, which comes around every 26 months as the planets move around the Sun.
This historic mission is documented in NASA reports and mission images - there are over 2800 images and 38 video clips on this disc.
Hundreds of amazing scenes are presented in their original GIF and JPG formats, organized by feature type.
Missions and programs included in Mars 2004 include: * Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Mars Images, including the August 2003 close encounter * NASA's Mars Exploration Program through 2003 * NASA Mars Exploration Program Gallery of Images * Manned Mission and Advanced Life Support material * NASA Mars Education material * Mars Global Surveyor MGS Wide Angle Map of Mars * Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Spirit and Opportunity Mission - basic information * Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) 2005 mission * Investigative Reports on the Failures of Mars Polar Lander, Deep Space 2, and Mars Climate Orbiter Mission * Imager for Mars Pathfinder, 1997 rover mission * Phoenix Mars Scout Mission lander scheduled for launch in August 2007
Titles included in this collection: * 2001 Mars Odyssey NASA Orbiter Mission (Two CD-ROM Set)
Titles included in this collection: * Mars Pathfinder - NASA Sojourner Rover - The First Rover on Mars 1997 - Sagan Memorial Station * Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) - Spacecraft, Mission, Science, and Images (Four CD-ROM Set)
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From
the charismatic scientist and leader of the Mars Exploration Rover mission,
a riveting, behind-the-scenes account of the search for life on Mars. Steve
Squyres is the face and voice of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission. He
dreamed up the mission in 1987, saw it through from conception in 1995 to a
successful landing in 2004, and serves as the principal scientist of its
$400 million payload. He has gained a rare inside look at what it took for
rovers Spirit and Opportunity to land on the red planet in January 2004 - and knows firsthand their findings. 
In
1964 the United States of America launched Mariner 4 towards Mars in the hope that a
handful of pictures returned by the spacecraft might answer some age-old questions. Was
there an ancient Martian civilization? Would there be any signs of life? So began the
first step in a close examination of our neighboring planet.
From 1985 to 2000 Joseph Boyce provided
scientific leadership to NASA as its Mars exploration program scientist. He has lived much
of the history of the planet's exploration, and his findings have helped to determine what
we know about Mars today. The Smithsonian Book of Mars is truly a firsthand account.
An authoritative and exciting recounting of the Mars Pathfinder
mission and the success of the Sojourner rover. The story begins with a brief but
enlightening discussion of why scientists send missions to Mars and the successes and
failures that occurred before the launch of Pathfinder in December of 1996. The book then
follows the designing and building of Sojourner and describes her performance on Mars
after landing on July 4, 1997. The rover did more than its designers and mission control
experts had hoped for. For nearly three months Sojourner sent data about the rocks, soil,
and weather on Mars, plus hundreds of color pictures. Readers follow this mission from its
conception and the construction of the rover to the final bits of data sent from Mars.
