Exploration and Engineering
eBook - ePub

Exploration and Engineering

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Quest for Mars

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Exploration and Engineering

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Quest for Mars

About this book

Getting to Mars required engineering genius, scientific strategy, and the drive to persevere in the face of failure.

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.

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Yes, you can access Exploration and Engineering by Erik M. Conway in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & Science History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Series Page
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. Contents
  6. Acknowledgments
  7. Introduction
  8. 1. Planetary Observers, Mars Observer
  9. 2. Politics and Engineering on the Martian Frontier
  10. 3. Attack of the Great Galactic Ghoul
  11. 4. Engineering for Uncertainty
  12. 5. Mars Mania
  13. 6. The Faster-Better-Cheaper Future
  14. 7. Revenge of the Great Galactic Ghoul
  15. 8. Recovery and Reform
  16. 9. Margins on the Final Frontier
  17. 10. Sending a Spy Satellite to Mars
  18. 11. Robotic Geologists on the Red Planet
  19. 12. Reengineering a Spacecraft, and a Program
  20. Conclusion
  21. Epilogue
  22. Appendix: NASA Organization and Mars Exploration
  23. Notes
  24. Bibliography
  25. Index