Why read Exploration and Engineering?

Book cover of Exploration and Engineering: The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Quest for Mars

Book description

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…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Exploration and Engineering as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Janet Vertesi

Author

If this book were episodes of Friends, it would include The One Where They Landed On Mars Before the Internet Was Invented, The One Where They Mixed Up English and Metric Units, The One Where A Lander Became A Crasher, and The One Where Everyone Fell In Love with Cute Robots.

Conway is the official JPL historian, so he has unprecedented access to the archives and the people behind NASA’s ongoing quest for Mars, and he lays each mission out with its political stakes and highs and lows in painstaking and rich detail. Reading this book reminds me that…

From Janet's list on The best books about NASA and space exploration, from a human perspective.