Rob Manning - Böcker

Early astronomers, drawn to Mars's fiery glow in the night sky, named the planet after their god of war. In the centuries since, Mars has captivated humankind as a source of endless speculation and a beacon of hope for its potential habitability. Through six decades of NASA’s pioneering research missions, the mysteries of the red planet have been gradually uncovered, revealing a world not so unlike our own that likely once supported life.See the earliest close-up images of Mars taken by the Mariner 4 spacecraft in 1965—the first ever captured of another planet—along with historical illustrations from an era when curiosity outpaced scientific progress. Science and art collide as NASA’s later orbiter missions capture aerial views of ancient riverbeds, polar ice caps, dust storms, vast canyons, and towering volcanoes in an endlessly varied landscape. As they traverse Mars’s rugged surface, NASA’s rovers have operated as mechanical extensions of humankind for the past 25 years, drilling holes, searching for traces of water, and marveling at mountain ranges and panoramic sunsets.Through hundreds of cutting-edge photographs from NASA's extensive archives, we join their scientists in the ongoing quest to better understand Mars. Essays by NASA’s former Chief Scientist James L. Green and JPL Chief Engineer Rob Manning provide an in-depth look at the history of Martian exploration and the challenges of preparing for these groundbreaking missions. Captions by planetary scientist Emily Lakdawalla skillfully illuminate each image's content and technical context, and a foreword by renowned poet Nikki Giovanni and an introduction by curator Margaret A. Weitekamp reflect on Mars’s significance in our cultural imagination.From a distant enigma to a tangible frontier whose every grain of sand we can now observe, this volume celebrates the extraordinary progress NASA has made, bringing us closer than ever to understanding our neighboring world.

The firsthand account of the trials and tribulations of engineering one of the most complex pieces of space technology, the Mars Rover Curiosity, by its chief engineer Rob Manning In the course of our enduring quest for knowledge about ourselves and our universe, we haven’t found answers to one of our most fundamental questions: Does life exist anywhere else in the universe? Ten years and billions of dollars in the making, the Mars Rover Curiosity is poised to answer this all-important question. In Mars Rover Curiosity: An Inside Account from Curiosity’s Chief Engineer, Rob Manning, the project’s chief engineer, tells of bringing the groundbreaking spacecraft to life. Manning and his team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, tasked with designing a lander many times larger and more complex than any before, faced technical setbacks, fights over inadequate resources, and the challenges of leading an army of brilliant, passionate, and often frustrated experts. Manning’s fascinating personal account—which includes information from his exclusive interviews with leading Curiosity scientists—is packed with tales of revolutionary feats of science, technology, and engineering. Readers experience firsthand the disappointment at encountering persistent technical problems, the agony of near defeat, the sense of victory at finding innovative solutions to these problems, the sheer terror of staking careers and reputations on a lander that couldn’t be tested on Earth, and the rush of triumph at its successful touchdown on Mars on August 5, 2012. This is the story of persistence, dedication, and unrelenting curiosity.