Publisher Description

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 universe around us. 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 civilisation? Would there be any signs of life? So began the first step in a close examination of our neighbouring planet. Between Mariner 4 and Mars Global Surveyor in 1988 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 this book the triumphs and tribulations of the American Mars programme 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.

Author Biography

Robert Godwin is the owner and founder of Apogee Space Books. He is also the Space Curator at the Canadian Air & Space Museum. He has written or edited over 100 books including the award winning series "The NASA Mission Reports". Robert has appeared on dozens of radio and television programs in Canada, the USA and England as an expert on, not only music, but also space exploration. His books have been discussed on CNN, the CBC, the BBC and CBS 60 Minutes. He produced the first ever virtual reality panoramas of the Apollo lunar surface photography and the first multi-camera angle movie of the Apollo 11 moonwalk. His last book "New Horizons" expanded on that previous ground-breaking work.

Table of Contents

Foreword; Preface; Introduction; The Coming of the Fleet; The Day the Earth Stood Still; Twin Earths; War of the Worlds; This Island Earth; Forbidden Planet; Earth vs. the Flying Saucers; Disneyland Flying Saucers; Lost in Space; The Invaders; Index.

Review

"A mine of useful information and well worth getting..." -- Astronomy Now, September 2001. "A well-conceived book which those interested in planetary exploration cannot afford to miss..." -- Spaceflight, November 2000.

Long Description

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 universe around us. 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 civilisation? Would there be any signs of life? So began the first step in a close examination of our neighbouring planet. Between Mariner 4 and Mars Global Surveyor in 1988 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 this book the triumphs and tribulations of the American Mars programme 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.

Review Quote

"A mine of useful information and well worth getting..." -- Astronomy Now, September 2001.

Details