Beyond Earth: A Chronicle of Deep Space Exploration

by Asif A. Siddiqi

Humans have used tools since our species arose hundreds of thousands of years ago. But our ability to send specialized tools, robotic spacecraft, into the heavens and leave our mark on the cosmos has spanned only the last 60 years. This book is a chronicle of our attempts to send these robotic travelers beyond Earth orbit, to the Moon, to other planets and their moons, to the Sun, to comets, to minor planets, to dwarf planets, and ultimately beyond the solar system. This remarkable international chronology goes from the early Cold War superpower competition to more recent and compelling scientific quests. From Sputnik to Cassini to Mars rovers and many more, this book is filled with many technical details and also stories of incredible hardships and successes of robotic space exploration.

Genres: Science, Space, History, Technology

392 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 29, 2018

Reviews

[Kam Yung Soh · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book that takes a chronological look at all the deep space missions launched by the United States, the Soviet Union and also, later, by Russia, ESA, Japan and India. Deep space here means out of Earth orbit, so unmanned missions to the Moon, other planets, the asteroids and other that enter orbits around the sun are covered. All missions means all known missions, whether they are successful or failures, especially from the Soviet Union who have a tendency to try to disguise failed missions as something else.

Depending on your fascination with space missions and your knowledge of space craft technology and terminology, this book will fascinate or bore you. The book is a basic list of craft launched year by year, with a short summary of the launch vehicle and controlling organisation, followed by a list of the included scientific instruments and ending with a summary of the craft's failures and successes.

The earlier chapters are brief, mainly due to the large number of failed launches by both the US and Soviet Union. But as time passes, the US start to get more successful launches and the summaries get longer. By the second half of the book, the number of launches has decreased, but the rate of success has gone up and other countries have started to get into the exploration scene.

Later missions are probably more familiar to readers who have kept up with current space exploration while the earlier chapters will give you an idea of just how many failed launches (or craft that launched but failed to fulfil their missions) marked the beginning of the space age.

Also of interest is the information on some craft that launched in the 20th century but are still working and providing (basic) data like their locations. The best examples of these still working craft are the Voyager probes.

The book is freely available for download as a NASA ebook.

[Royce Ratterman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A comprehensive chronological compilation of attempts and successes related to the history of space explorations and missions. Using my Kindle, research was simplified making it easy to find and click on specific topics of research. Easy to read format enables one to get a quick overview of significant details, including if the mission was successful or not. "From Sputnik to Cassini to Mars rovers and many more, this book is filled with many technical details and also stories of incredible hardships and successes of robotic space exploration." A treasure trove of research documents are available for free download via NASA.
This book's formats: Kindle readers: MOBI [16 MB], eBook readers: EPUB [19 MB], Fixed layout: PDF [9 MB]
https://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/b...

[Jingyuan Ren · Rating 5 out of 5]

free for downloading!
https://www.nasa.gov/history/history-...