Exploration and Engineering

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Quest for Mars

Erik M. Conway (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

416 Seiten

2015
Johns Hopkins University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4214-1604-5 (ISBN)

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Although the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has become synonymous with the United States' planetary exploration during the past half century, its most recent focus has been on Mars. Beginning in the 1990s and continuing through the Mars Phoenix mission of 2007, JPL led the way in engineering an impressive, rapidly evolving succession of Mars orbiters and landers, including roving robotic vehicles whose successful deployment onto the Martian surface posed some of the most complicated technical problems in space flight history. In Exploration and Engineering, Erik M. Conway reveals how JPL engineers' creative technological feats led to major breakthroughs in Mars exploration. He takes readers into the heart of the lab's problem-solving approach and management structure, where talented scientists grappled with technical challenges while also coping, not always successfully, with funding shortfalls, unrealistic schedules, and managerial turmoil.
Conway, JPL's historian, offers an insider's perspective into the changing goals of Mars exploration, the ways in which sophisticated computer simulations drove the design process, and the remarkable evolution of landing technologies over a thirty-year period.

Erik M. Conway is a historian of science and technology at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. He is the author of Atmospheric Science at NASA: A History.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Planetary Observers, Mars Observer
2. Politics and Engineering on the Martian Frontier
3. Attack of the Great Galactic Ghoul
4. Engineering for Uncertainty
5. Mars Mania
6. The Faster-Better-Cheaper Future
7. Revenge of the Great Galactic Ghoul
8. Recovery and Reform
9. Margins on the Final Frontier
10. Sending a Spy Satellite to Mars
11. Robotic Geologists on the Red Planet
12. Reengineering a Spacecraft, and a Program
Conclusion
Epilogue
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Erscheint lt. Verlag	25.5.2015
Reihe/Serie	New Series in NASA History
Zusatzinfo	10 Line drawings, black and white; 11 Halftones, black and white
Verlagsort	Baltimore, MD
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	816 g
Themenwelt	Naturwissenschaften ► Geowissenschaften ► Geologie
	Naturwissenschaften ► Physik / Astronomie ► Astronomie / Astrophysik
	Technik ► Luft- / Raumfahrttechnik
ISBN-10	1-4214-1604-2 / 1421416042
ISBN-13	978-1-4214-1604-5 / 9781421416045
Zustand	Neuware