I am pleased to note that this week Palgrave Macmillan released my edited work, Exploring the Solar System: The History and Science of Planetary Exploration. This book has been years in the making, and includes essays on a broad selection of topics by a diverse set of authors. It was only possible because of a generous grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Science Mission Directorate. My thanks to all those who helped to make this work a reality. I hope you will find it useful. It is available at the Palgrave Macmillan website for $85.00 hardcover.
Here is the table of contents for this book:
Part I: Managing Planetary Science
Chapter 1: Homer Newell and the Origins of Planetary Science in the United States, John D. Ruley
Chapter 2: The Survival Crisis of the US Solar System Exploration Program in the 1980s, John M. Logsdon
Chapter 3: Faster, Better, Cheaper: A Sociotechnical Perspective on Programmatic Choice, Success, and Failure in NASA’s Solar System Exploration Program, Amy Paige Kaminski
Part II: Developing New Approaches to Planetary Exploration
Chapter 4: Redefining Celestial Mechanics in the Space Age: Astrodynamics, Deep-Space Navigation, and the Pursuit of Accuracy, Andrew J. Butrica
Chapter 5: Big Science in Space: Viking, Cassini, and the Hubble Space Telescope, W. Henry Lambright
Chapter 6: Visual Imagery in Solar System Exploration, Peter J. Westwick
Chapter 7: Returning Scientific Data to Earth: The Parallel but Unequal Careers of Genesis and Stardust and the Problem of Sample Return to Earth, Roger D. Launius
Part III: Exploring the Terrestrial Planets
Chapter 8: Planetary Science and the “Discovery” of Global Warming, Erik M. Conway
Chapter 9: Exploring Planet Earth: The Development of Satellite Remote Sensing for Earth Science, Andrew K. Johnston
Chapter 10: Venus-Earth-Mars: Comparative Climatology and the Search for Life in the Solar System, Roger D. Launius
Chapter 11: Missions to Mars: Reimagining the Red Planet in the Age of Spaceflight, Robert Markley
Part IV: Unveiling the Outer Solar System
Chapter 12: Parachuting onto Another World: The European Space Agency’s Huygens Mission to Titan, Arturo Russo
Chapter 13: Pluto: The Problem Planet and its Scientists, David H. DeVorkin
Chapter 14: Transcendence and Meaning in Solar System Exploration, William E. Burrows
The advertising blurb for this book states: “From the beginning of the Space Age the United States, followed soon by other nations, began an impressive effort to learn about the planets of the solar system. The data collected and analyzed by scientists has revolutionized understanding of our neighbors. These efforts also captured the imagination of people from all backgrounds like nothing else except the Apollo lunar missions. Through a succession of analytical essays on major aspects of the history of robotic planetary exploration, this book opens new vistas in the understanding of the development of planetary science in the Space Age.”
Copies of the book are available at Palgrave Macmillan and other on-line book sellers.
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