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Summary:

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 Mars exploration breakthroughs. 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.

Table of Contents:

• Planetary observers, Mars observer
• Politics and engineering on the Martian frontier
• Attack of the great galactic ghoul
• Engineering for uncertainty
• Mars mania
• The faster-better-cheaper future
• Revenge of the great galactic ghoul
• Recovery and reform
• Margins on the final frontier
• Sending a spy satellite to Mars
• Robotic geologists on the red planet
• Reengineering a spacecraft, and a program.

Author/Creator:

Conway, Erik M., 1965-

Languages:

English

Language Notes:

Item content: English

Main Work:

Exploration and engineering: the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the quest for Mars [by Conway, E.M.]

Related Series:

New series in NASA history

Subjects:

Jet Propulsion Laboratory (U.S.)

Space flight to Mars

Mars (Planet) — Exploration

General Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 387-392) and index.
Description based on print version record.

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Call Numbers:

TL799.M3 C66 2015eb

ISBNs:

9781421416052 (electronic bk.)
1421416050 (electronic bk.)
9781421416045 [Invalid]
1421416042 [Invalid]

OCLC Numbers:

904420957

Other Control Numbers:

EBC3318876 (source: MiAaPQ)
[Unknown Type]: ybp12318972