Exploring Space: Voyages in the Solar System and Beyond 1st edition by Burrows, William E. (1991) Hardcover

by William E. Burrows

Excellent Book

Genres: Science, Space, Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published January 16, 1991

Reviews

[Ushan · Rating 4 out of 5]

In parallel with manned space missions such as Apollo and Soyuz, robots have been exploring the Solar System: the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, the outer planets, moons of the other planets, comets and asteroids. A human explorer has to be brought back, so he could die on Earth of old age, and a robot can be abandoned after its mission is complete; a human explorer needs oxygen, food, water and a toilet, and can withstand much less radiation than a robot. Like with manned missions, there was a mad race for priority. The American Mariner 9 probe orbited Mars in November 1971, but couldn't image the Red Planet because of a planet-wide dust storm; while it was in orbit, the Soviet Mars 2 and Mars 3 probes landed straight into the storm; all radio contact with Mars 2 was lost immediately, and with Mars 3 20 seconds after the landing. Thus the honor of the first soft landing on Mars goes to the Soviet probe, even though little came of it; the American orbiter discovered more. As the dust storm was settling in February 1972, Mariner 9 saw four tall mountains emerge, the tallest 2 1/2 times as tall as Mount Everest on Earth. Building and sending the probes required some amazing engineering. The Voyager probes use 20-watt radio transmitters over 10 billion kilometers; it takes 70-meter-wide radio telescope dishes to communicate with them. They also used Reed-Solomon error-correcting codes before consumer electronics such as CD players did. Voyager 2's Neptune data were processed on a hypercube-architecture supercomputer. Voyager 2 was originally meant to explore just Jupiter and Saturn; it was only after it had performed so well that its mission was extended to Uranus and Neptune, making it gain velocity using the gravity assist technique, which was invented by a graduate student interning at JPL. In addition to withstanding the hazards of outer space, the probes also had to brave the rigors of American politics. Two Soviet Vega probes and a European Giotto probe explored Halley's Comet; the American mission to the comet fell victim to the higher-profile Space Shuttle. Pretty much all we know about the rest of the Solar System comes from these probes. Read Ray Bradbury's stories set on Mars and Venus and think that they did not contradict the science at the time of their writing!