Book Review: Mars Up Close – Inside the Curiosity Mission

Mars Up Close: Inside the Curiosity Mission by Marc Kaufman; National Geographic Books, Wash., D.C.; $40.00 (hardcover); August 2014.

This is an absolutely stunning book. After this read, and soaking in the lavishly dazzling presentation, you’ll get to know the fourth planet as never before … and why this world is a place that is ready for human exploration.

Kudos go to the author, Marc Kaufman, a gifted science journalist that transformed himself to become an “embedded Martian,” spending two years with engineers and scientists dedicated to exploring the enigmatic world. He observed up-close and personal the drama and tension of getting NASA’s Curiosity rover up into space, then down and dirty on the Red Planet.

The book’s publication date is timed to salute the August 6, 2012 landing of Curiosity – but sends the reader on a journey that is now on-going. In a very real sense, this book is a toolkit to better appreciate the mystery that is Mars – not just from a geological perspective, but the pursuit to uncover whether the planet was, or is now, an extraterrestrial address for life.

I found the “Mission Makers” segments in the book particularly appealing. So often the gee-whiz hardware overwhelms the fact that humans make the hardware happen. These vignettes of the men and women on the forefront of discovery while uncovering more puzzling questions add to the vitality of this book.

As Kaufman reflects: “For me, Curiosity has forever increased that gravitational pull of interest about our cousin planet. We’ve been connected since the start, both born from the same disk of debris orbiting our protosun. It’s not inevitable that our futures will bring us closer again, but it’s quite possible, and quite desirable, too. A challenge, a prize, a time capsule like no other, Mars beckons.”