Exploring Mars – Chronicles from a Decade of Discovery by Scott Hubbard; University of Arizona Press, Tucson, Arizona; $17.95 (paperback); December 2011.
As I write this today, NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover is outbound for the red planet. It has been a long haul for the robot to get en route. It experienced its own set of close encounters with technical and managerial issues, as well as financial.
Still, as always, NASA’s link to Mars is a strong one.
Author Scott Hubbard has given the reader an inside look at getting to Mars: It’s not easy! And reading this book will give even the most active space cadet a better appreciation of why Mars, why it’s a difficult problem child of a planet, and what that globe has to offer in terms of our future.
Mars continues to suck us in. A past or present abode of life? An address for humanity’s first planetary footprints? The mystique of Mars is alive and well – perhaps a masquerade party of the biological kind, a cover-up for it being a cozy home for microbial life?
Scott Hubbard was the first NASA Mars Program director – better labeled as the “Mars Czar.” He sparked a reshaping of NASA’s Mars plans in the wake of the loss of the Mars Polar Lander and the Mars Climate Orbiter. That restructuring effort led directly to the success of Mars Odyssey, the rovers Spirit and Opportunity, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and paved the way for the just-launched Mars Science Laboratory (MSL).
Those words are easy to read…but hard to implement.
This tell-all book will take you behind-the-scenes of “the process” that one has to tackle to make change. You’ll be surprised at the shoe leather needed to tread your way to a sound Mars exploration effort. There are many players needed to make the Mars record (ok, CD) that NASA’s striving to play not to skip.
Hubbard spotlights his own trajectory into the Washington, D.C. mix of “prom night” tuxedo occasions, along with “soggy canapés and warm Chardonnay” – just to give you a taste for his lightly-spread quips.
The series of NASA Mars missions each build on the accomplishments of those before it – from “follow the water” to where we now stand given the exciting tools onboard MSL’s Curiosity robot.
“Mars is hard,” Hubbard emphasizes throughout this volume. While this book details the need to have the technology for probing Mars, it also probes the people, the dollars, the personalities, and the inspiring yearn for exploration that fuels it all.
Curiosity has just departed our world, headed for Mars. You’ve got time to conduct your own cruise phase of reading – and you’ll be better prepared for the fingers-crossed landing day next August!
For more information on this book, go to:
http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/Books/bid2340.htm
By Leonard David