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Dreams of Other Worlds describes the unmanned space missions that have opened new windows on distant worlds. Spanning four decades of dramatic advances in astronomy and planetary science, this book tells the story of eleven iconic exploratory missions and how they have fundamentally transformed our scientific and cultural perspectives on the universe and our place in it.The journey begins with the Viking and Mars Exploration Rover missions to Mars, which paint a startling picture of a planet at the cusp of habitability. It then moves into the realm of the gas giants with the Voyager probes and Cassinis ongoing exploration of the moons of Saturn. The Stardust probes dramatic round-trip encounter with a comet is brought vividly to life, as are the SOHO and Hipparcos missions to study the Sun and Milky Way. This stunningly illustrated book also explores how our view of the universe has been brought into sharp focus by NASAs great observatories--Spitzer, Chandra, and Hubble--and how the WMAP mission has provided rare glimpses of the dawn of creation.Dreams of Other Worlds reveals how these unmanned exploratory missions have redefined what it means to be the temporary tenants of a small planet in a vast cosmos.
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IIIII Dreams of Other Worlds Dreams of Other Worlds The Amazing Story of Unmanned Space Exploration IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII Chris Impey and Holly Henry Princeton University Press Princeton and Oxford Copyright © 2013 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW press.princeton.edu Jacket Illustrations: Planet with sunrise on the background of stars. © Molodec. Courtesy of Shutterstock. Artist’s rendering of the planet Kepler-22b, located in the “habitable zone” of the Kepler-22 star system. Courtesy of NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech. All Rights Reserved ISBN 978-0-691-14753-6 Library of Congress Control Number: 2013939381 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Sabon and Helvetica Neue Printed on acid-free paper ∞ Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 IIIII Contents 1 ■ Introduction 1 2 ■ Viking: Discovering the Red Planet 13 3 ■ MER: The Little Rovers That Could 40 4 ■ Voyager: Grand Tour of the Solar System 74 5 ■ Cassini: Bright Rings and Icy Worlds 111 6 ■ Stardust: Catching a Comet by the Tail 137 7 ■ SOHO: Living with a Restless Star 161 8 ■ Hipparcos: Mapping the Milky Way 186 9 ■ Spitzer: Unveiling the Cool Cosmos 211 10 ■ Chandra: Exploring the Violent Cosmos 242 11 ■ HST: The Universe in Sharp Focus 270 12 ■ WMAP: Mapping the Infant Universe 302 13 ■ Conclusion: New Horizons, New Worlds 327 Notes 343 Selected Bibliography 405 Index 417 IIIII Dreams of Other Worlds 1 IIIIII Introduction Someone who “missed” the late part of the twentieth century, perhaps by being in a coma or a deep sleep, or by being marooned on a desert island, would have many adjustments to make upon rejoining civilization. The largest would probably be the galloping progress in computers and telecommunications and information technology. But if their attention turned to astronomy, they would also be amazed by what had been learned in the interim. In the last third of the century, Mars turned from a pale red disk as seen through a telescope to a planet with ancient lake beds and subterranean glaciers.