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The Mission
A masterful, genre-defying narrative of the most ambitious science project ever conceived: NASA’s deep space mission to Europa, the Jovian moon where might swim the first known alien life in our solar system
In the spirit of Tom Wolfe and John McPhee, The Mission is an exuberant master class of creative nonfiction that reveals how a motley, determined few expanded the horizon of human achievement.
When scientists discovered the first ocean beyond Earth, they had two big questions: “Is it habitable?” and “How do we get there?” To answer the first, they had to solve the second, and so began a vivacious team’s twenty-year odyssey to mount a mission to Europa, the ocean moon of Jupiter.
Standing in their way: NASA, fanatically consumed with landing robots on Mars; the White House, which never saw a science budget it couldn’t cut; Congress, fixated on going to the moon or Mars—anywhere, really, to give astronauts something to do; rivals in academia, who wanted instead to go to Saturn; and even Jupiter itself, which guards Europa in a pulsing, rippling radiation belt—a halo of death whose conditions are like those that follow a detonated thermonuclear bomb.
The Mission is the Homeric, never-before-told story of modern space exploration, and a magnificent portrait of the inner lives of scientists who study the solar system’s mysterious outer planets. David W. Brown chronicles the remarkable saga of how Europa was won, and what it takes to get things done—both down here, and up there.
In the spirit of Tom Wolfe and John McPhee, The Mission is an exuberant master class of creative nonfiction that reveals how a motley, determined few expanded the horizon of human achievement.
When scientists discovered the first ocean beyond Earth, they had two big questions: “Is it habitable?” and “How do we get there?” To answer the first, they had to solve the second, and so began a vivacious team’s twenty-year odyssey to mount a mission to Europa, the ocean moon of Jupiter.
Standing in their way: NASA, fanatically consumed with landing robots on Mars; the White House, which never saw a science budget it couldn’t cut; Congress, fixated on going to the moon or Mars—anywhere, really, to give astronauts something to do; rivals in academia, who wanted instead to go to Saturn; and even Jupiter itself, which guards Europa in a pulsing, rippling radiation belt—a halo of death whose conditions are like those that follow a detonated thermonuclear bomb.
The Mission is the Homeric, never-before-told story of modern space exploration, and a magnificent portrait of the inner lives of scientists who study the solar system’s mysterious outer planets. David W. Brown chronicles the remarkable saga of how Europa was won, and what it takes to get things done—both down here, and up there.
480 pages, Hardcover
First published January 26, 2021
189 people are currently reading
5566 people want to read
About the author
David W. Brown
3 books88 followersDavid W. Brown is a freelance writer whose nonfiction appears frequently in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Scientific American, and Smithsonian. His other publishers include The New Yorker, Vox, and Foreign Policy. He is an Antarctic expeditioner, an endurance runner, a former Army paratrooper, and a veteran of Afghanistan. He is a graduate of Louisiana State University and holds a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Arkansas at Monticello.
The Mission
is his fourth book. Brown lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 125 reviews
December 29, 2020
Well I thought it was a masterpiece of modern creative nonfiction, but I am way, way biased here.
October 20, 2020
This is one of the most impressive works of nonfiction I’ve ever read. It defies genre in many ways. It’s science, yes, but it’s driven by characters—brilliant, real-life scientists with contagious determination. David Brown turns complex planetary science into lyrical, accessible prose without being condescending or pedantic. It was compulsively readable and astonishing in scholarship.
Recommended. +
Recommended. +
September 8, 2020
Watch enough space movies, read enough space books, whether science fact or science fiction, and there’s a moment you’ll see play out time and time again – And Then A Rocket Appears On The Pad.
Maybe it’s not a rocket. Maybe it’s a starship or a science probe. But the moment plays out the same. An incredibly complex piece of machine appears out of nowhere – machina ex deus – having and needing no origin, and then the “real story” begins.
But rockets and starships and science probes don’t appear out of nowhere. They do have origins. For every rocket that appears on a pad, there’s a story of toil and ingenuity that explains how it got there.
David W. Brown’s “The Mission” is not that story. “The Mission” is the story before that story.
Before a rocket appears on a pad, before a space probe appears in a payload fairing, before a starship appears in the stars, there is an official program, a concerted effort of the aforementioned toil and ingenuity, and multiple flavors of engineering and probably some science.
But before that official program, there’s an idea. A dream.
“The Mission” is that story. The titular Mission is a mission to Europa, a moon of Jupiter, a smallish orb of rock and water and ice that looms far larger than its physical size in the landscape of solar system science because of that water. On Earth, where there’s water, there’s life. And Europa not only has twice as much water as the pale blue dot where we live, it’s conveniently spewing that water into space, right out there for a visiting spacecraft to taste.
“The Mission” is not a story of flying a yet-unflown Europa mission, nor a story of building a yet-unbuilt yet-unflown Europa mission. It’s the story of an idea, a dream dreamt over decades to explore this strange new world, and perhaps to seek out new life in its ocean.
It is still, most definitely, a story of toil and ingenuity. It is also a very human story, and it is there that Brown elevates his subject from interesting to captivating.
As an experienced journalist, Brown has a portfolio packed with well-told space stories. He has a demonstrated knack for taking “rocket science” and not only making it accessible, not only conveying Why It Matters, but also capturing Why It’s Awesome, finding amidst the data the things that stir souls.
That talent is brought fully to bear in “The Mission,” and impressively so – it’s one thing to bring that level of creativity to short-form non-fiction, but here Brown sprints a marathon, maintaining the same engaging style over hundreds of pages he delivers on the first.
The heart of “The Mission,” however, is a very human heart. It’s a story laden with science spacecraft and alien worlds and trajectory comparisons, but it’s a story about people. Brown’s tapestry here weaves the story of its Europa mission through the lives of the people who have touched, and been touched by, the dream of that mission, interlacing space science with chicken farms and car wrecks and former NSYNC member Lance Bass.
At the end of “The Mission” the call of Europa is still calling. Its mysteries are still mysterious. But Brown has pulled back the veil on another little-seen world – a world of men and women with dogged determination to clad a dream in metal and propel it toward the stars.
Maybe it’s not a rocket. Maybe it’s a starship or a science probe. But the moment plays out the same. An incredibly complex piece of machine appears out of nowhere – machina ex deus – having and needing no origin, and then the “real story” begins.
But rockets and starships and science probes don’t appear out of nowhere. They do have origins. For every rocket that appears on a pad, there’s a story of toil and ingenuity that explains how it got there.
David W. Brown’s “The Mission” is not that story. “The Mission” is the story before that story.
Before a rocket appears on a pad, before a space probe appears in a payload fairing, before a starship appears in the stars, there is an official program, a concerted effort of the aforementioned toil and ingenuity, and multiple flavors of engineering and probably some science.
But before that official program, there’s an idea. A dream.
“The Mission” is that story. The titular Mission is a mission to Europa, a moon of Jupiter, a smallish orb of rock and water and ice that looms far larger than its physical size in the landscape of solar system science because of that water. On Earth, where there’s water, there’s life. And Europa not only has twice as much water as the pale blue dot where we live, it’s conveniently spewing that water into space, right out there for a visiting spacecraft to taste.
“The Mission” is not a story of flying a yet-unflown Europa mission, nor a story of building a yet-unbuilt yet-unflown Europa mission. It’s the story of an idea, a dream dreamt over decades to explore this strange new world, and perhaps to seek out new life in its ocean.
It is still, most definitely, a story of toil and ingenuity. It is also a very human story, and it is there that Brown elevates his subject from interesting to captivating.
As an experienced journalist, Brown has a portfolio packed with well-told space stories. He has a demonstrated knack for taking “rocket science” and not only making it accessible, not only conveying Why It Matters, but also capturing Why It’s Awesome, finding amidst the data the things that stir souls.
That talent is brought fully to bear in “The Mission,” and impressively so – it’s one thing to bring that level of creativity to short-form non-fiction, but here Brown sprints a marathon, maintaining the same engaging style over hundreds of pages he delivers on the first.
The heart of “The Mission,” however, is a very human heart. It’s a story laden with science spacecraft and alien worlds and trajectory comparisons, but it’s a story about people. Brown’s tapestry here weaves the story of its Europa mission through the lives of the people who have touched, and been touched by, the dream of that mission, interlacing space science with chicken farms and car wrecks and former NSYNC member Lance Bass.
At the end of “The Mission” the call of Europa is still calling. Its mysteries are still mysterious. But Brown has pulled back the veil on another little-seen world – a world of men and women with dogged determination to clad a dream in metal and propel it toward the stars.
January 4, 2023
This was quite the disappointing science book. I imagined this was going to be a wonderful journey of science and discovery were I would learn more about space travel, the science of Europa, and the fascinating engineering of creating a spacecraft.
Unfortunately, it turned out to be a blow-by-blow recount of the bureaucracy and red tape of creating a spacecraft with a government budget. It was strange to read a book that was about building a spaceship to travel to Europa and have so little information about this moon, Jupiter or space travel.
It's too bad because the author is quite a good writer. I found myself chuckling several times in the book and really enjoyed his imagery. He's quite an entertainer.
Unfortunately the book lacks narrative and bounced around from topic to topic. I would definitely not recommend this book.
Unfortunately, it turned out to be a blow-by-blow recount of the bureaucracy and red tape of creating a spacecraft with a government budget. It was strange to read a book that was about building a spaceship to travel to Europa and have so little information about this moon, Jupiter or space travel.
It's too bad because the author is quite a good writer. I found myself chuckling several times in the book and really enjoyed his imagery. He's quite an entertainer.
Unfortunately the book lacks narrative and bounced around from topic to topic. I would definitely not recommend this book.
January 26, 2021
I gave this book to my dad to read, who wouldn't stop raving about it from the moment he read the cover, up until two days after finishing it. He appreciated and enjoyed the in-depth look at NASA and this specific space mission. The book gave a deep, insightful look on NASA's politics and innerworkings of the organization.
Goodreads giveaway, I received an advanced reading copy.
I'll probably end up reading this book, too, at a later time.
Goodreads giveaway, I received an advanced reading copy.
I'll probably end up reading this book, too, at a later time.
February 10, 2021
An exciting story about NASA bureaucrats giving Powerpoint presentations to boost their budgets. Actually, I wouldn't mind hearing that funding story. Brown avoids most of it. There is no gossip here, no inside dirt. Everybody is a genius (in Brown's effusive prose, any college graduate is basically a PhD, with the brain of Einstein), and even utter boondoggles like the SLS are somehow worthy of support. Rivalries hardly exist. A racist, anti-science Republican representative is a dedicated American hero. (Brown avoids almost all space science.)
For a good story about NASA funding, rivalries, and more, I'd recommend Alan Stern and David Grinspoon's "Chasing New Horizons."
For a good story about NASA funding, rivalries, and more, I'd recommend Alan Stern and David Grinspoon's "Chasing New Horizons."
March 17, 2022
How a tabloid writer turned a NASA scientists and JPL engineers into sounding like petulant, backbiting, kindergarteners, whilst boring you to tears with 3 generations heredity and decor decisions of the Marriott hotel.
Mr. Brown needs a lesson in science. It is always at the behest of its patrons--Kepler, Copernicus, etc. JPL and NASA's patrons are the American people. So doing a book that should have been 75% shorter and lighter on SF cabbies double honk, inner (unspoken) thoughts and dietary choices would have been a better approach.
To the author I say, 'The Daily Mail is hiring your ilk.' To the people in it, I'm certain that you felt excited that this person wanted to write about you, your life, your parents, your grandparents, ad naseum, but you should have gotten someone that knew something about science, in general, and astroscience, in particular, to write this book.
Not only is the chocked full of wasteful prose from how loud the hallways are at AGU to the artwork in meeting rooms, it jumps hither thither leaving you over and over again struggling with the timeline of events. You are in 1939. You are in 2013, you are in 1954, you are in 2010.
He repeats things over and over creating more unnecessary content. I kept asking myself, does the author think we are idiots or does he realize that once we see the pattern we'll start skipping--which is spot on. From the, aptly named, Chapter 11 forward, I never read another word of backstory. If the date wasn't current, I passed over it along with wasteful side trips in room decor. There's context and the there's CONTEXT. But when you know nothing about the science, I guess a building's history and interior design is what you write about.
Yes, people make this happen. Real people with real lives. And that's a good reminder for those of is that admire these people for their perseverance. But this book is a hack job of two well-respected agencies for the purpose of vanity--and little else.
Mr. Brown needs a lesson in science. It is always at the behest of its patrons--Kepler, Copernicus, etc. JPL and NASA's patrons are the American people. So doing a book that should have been 75% shorter and lighter on SF cabbies double honk, inner (unspoken) thoughts and dietary choices would have been a better approach.
To the author I say, 'The Daily Mail is hiring your ilk.' To the people in it, I'm certain that you felt excited that this person wanted to write about you, your life, your parents, your grandparents, ad naseum, but you should have gotten someone that knew something about science, in general, and astroscience, in particular, to write this book.
Not only is the chocked full of wasteful prose from how loud the hallways are at AGU to the artwork in meeting rooms, it jumps hither thither leaving you over and over again struggling with the timeline of events. You are in 1939. You are in 2013, you are in 1954, you are in 2010.
He repeats things over and over creating more unnecessary content. I kept asking myself, does the author think we are idiots or does he realize that once we see the pattern we'll start skipping--which is spot on. From the, aptly named, Chapter 11 forward, I never read another word of backstory. If the date wasn't current, I passed over it along with wasteful side trips in room decor. There's context and the there's CONTEXT. But when you know nothing about the science, I guess a building's history and interior design is what you write about.
Yes, people make this happen. Real people with real lives. And that's a good reminder for those of is that admire these people for their perseverance. But this book is a hack job of two well-respected agencies for the purpose of vanity--and little else.
February 5, 2021
This is a highly accessible and compelling narrative history of the long journey that will culminate in the Europa Clipper mission, launching in the mid 2020s. This Jovian moon offers the best known chance that we Earthlings have of finding life in our own solar system. Europa almost certainly has a salt sea under its surface ice crust, and almost certainly has the essential ingredients for life to evolve.
Brown takes the reader on a deep dive through the adoption and on-going development of the mission. The interplay of the elements: the science, the institutions, the incredible people, the FUNDING, FUNDING, FUNDING, and, of course, the existential awe inspiring, frightening, and dangerous phenomenon of outer space itself, all are interwoven into a narrative that flows like a novel.
Many of the people involved in the space program are truly unforgettable, and Brown's prose elicits the respect and sometimes reverence these dedicated and dogged scientists deserve. One element I found particularly interesting, and also amusing at times, was the love affair with Mars of some players and the public, which frustrated the Europa supporters, who believe the icy moon more rewarding to explore.
The writing is lovely and clear, and one doesn't have to bring any particular knowledge of the space program to the book to enjoy it as an exciting and uplifting story.
The contrast between the meticulous detailed work and the awe and wonder of the actual goal, Europa, will leave a lasting impression.
Highly recommended popular science.
Brown takes the reader on a deep dive through the adoption and on-going development of the mission. The interplay of the elements: the science, the institutions, the incredible people, the FUNDING, FUNDING, FUNDING, and, of course, the existential awe inspiring, frightening, and dangerous phenomenon of outer space itself, all are interwoven into a narrative that flows like a novel.
Many of the people involved in the space program are truly unforgettable, and Brown's prose elicits the respect and sometimes reverence these dedicated and dogged scientists deserve. One element I found particularly interesting, and also amusing at times, was the love affair with Mars of some players and the public, which frustrated the Europa supporters, who believe the icy moon more rewarding to explore.
The writing is lovely and clear, and one doesn't have to bring any particular knowledge of the space program to the book to enjoy it as an exciting and uplifting story.
The contrast between the meticulous detailed work and the awe and wonder of the actual goal, Europa, will leave a lasting impression.
Highly recommended popular science.
July 10, 2021
A dear friend of mine is an actual “rocket scientist”. I feel like this book gives the rest of us excellent insight into the wonders, struggles, and frustrations of dedicating your life to this world. The science is not overly “dumbed down”, but it is approachable for those of us who may only remember about half of the key takeaways from high school physics.
Ostensibly this work is about what it took to finally get a dedicated mission to Europa. And, it was an arduous winding road to get the mission going. To begin to appreciate what the key players went through to see their professional life goal come to fruition, as each player is introduced we hear about how they got into the space sciences field in the first place. We learn to appreciate their dedication and how much this dream means to each one of them.
Towards the end of the book I found myself hunting down podcasts and websites that talk about the current missions NASA is involved with. And, by the way, when I say “NASA” I’m not just talking about employees of the agency. So much of the space sciences community work for JPL, APL, and a host of supporting science and policy organizations, all of whom are critical to Earth’s (not just the U.S.’s) space programs.
If looking at the stars has ever filled you with wonder; if you remember the moon walk; or if you were ever filled with ecstasy or despair while watching space shuttle launches; or, if like me, you got goosebumps watching any of the SpaceX successes over the last few years, you absolutely owe it to yourself to READ THIS BOOK!
Ostensibly this work is about what it took to finally get a dedicated mission to Europa. And, it was an arduous winding road to get the mission going. To begin to appreciate what the key players went through to see their professional life goal come to fruition, as each player is introduced we hear about how they got into the space sciences field in the first place. We learn to appreciate their dedication and how much this dream means to each one of them.
Towards the end of the book I found myself hunting down podcasts and websites that talk about the current missions NASA is involved with. And, by the way, when I say “NASA” I’m not just talking about employees of the agency. So much of the space sciences community work for JPL, APL, and a host of supporting science and policy organizations, all of whom are critical to Earth’s (not just the U.S.’s) space programs.
If looking at the stars has ever filled you with wonder; if you remember the moon walk; or if you were ever filled with ecstasy or despair while watching space shuttle launches; or, if like me, you got goosebumps watching any of the SpaceX successes over the last few years, you absolutely owe it to yourself to READ THIS BOOK!
December 21, 2020
I remember writing a paper in high school about the prospects of life on Europa, circa 2008. Hence I was tickled when I was chosen as a giveaway winner for an advanced reader's copy!
But what I liked most about this narration was the deep dive into the career paths and trajectories of the various individuals that came to be part of this mission, or the studies along the way. Gave me a few nights of existential "what am I doing with my life?" as I pondered my own career path. Even though my history isn't related to space science, it is science-laden enough (I tried graduate school myself before finding it too stressful), thus my reading did give me a lot of pause of just how it might still change to bring me back to something I enjoy more than I do now, whether I'm presently aware I'll like it or not.
Brown makes this topic very accessible to a lay person, very conversational, and downright "I didn't expect that sort of writing style in a nonfiction work!" It really flowed and felt quite immersive, and I kept track of the "story" despite there being so many names. Brown really rallied around the project names more to help keep the chronological thread.
Overall an enjoyable read. I look forward to recommending to my space nerd friends.
But what I liked most about this narration was the deep dive into the career paths and trajectories of the various individuals that came to be part of this mission, or the studies along the way. Gave me a few nights of existential "what am I doing with my life?" as I pondered my own career path. Even though my history isn't related to space science, it is science-laden enough (I tried graduate school myself before finding it too stressful), thus my reading did give me a lot of pause of just how it might still change to bring me back to something I enjoy more than I do now, whether I'm presently aware I'll like it or not.
Brown makes this topic very accessible to a lay person, very conversational, and downright "I didn't expect that sort of writing style in a nonfiction work!" It really flowed and felt quite immersive, and I kept track of the "story" despite there being so many names. Brown really rallied around the project names more to help keep the chronological thread.
Overall an enjoyable read. I look forward to recommending to my space nerd friends.
December 23, 2021
One of the most entertaining space non-fiction books I've read in a while. More detailed review to follow.
Update: Well, I had a 3000-character review typed out, then Goodreads ate it. Fiddlesticks.
tl;dr Brown's writing was excellent and engaging, the book was great, Europa is an exciting place to visit and we'll hopefully get there after Europa Clipper launches 2024, and NASA wasted a ton of money on the Space Launch System. Highly recommended to space geeks.
Update: Well, I had a 3000-character review typed out, then Goodreads ate it. Fiddlesticks.
tl;dr Brown's writing was excellent and engaging, the book was great, Europa is an exciting place to visit and we'll hopefully get there after Europa Clipper launches 2024, and NASA wasted a ton of money on the Space Launch System. Highly recommended to space geeks.
March 3, 2021
On October 10, 2024, a NASA spacecraft dubbed the Europa Clipper is scheduled to launch toward the large Jovian moon of Europa. It’s expected to arrive in April 2030. The Europa Clipper is just the final expression of a long procession of planned missions to Europa and the other Galilean moons of Jupiter that began in 1997 but never got off the drawing-board. And therein lies a fascinating tale. It’s the subject of David W. Brown’s extraordinary study of NASA and Big Science in action, The Mission. And unlike Mars, the focus of the agency’s almost single-minded attention, Europa’s immense ocean may actually harbor living, breathing extraterrestrial life.
In prose that at times calls to mind the stylistic pyrotechnics of Tom Wolfe in The Right Stuff, Brown follows the brilliant scientists, engineers, and managers at NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Applied Physics Laboratory, and other facilities that became involved over the two-decade period during which the Clipper mission to Europa came to fruition. For anyone with even a modicum of interest in space travel or the ways and means of Big Science, or simply an engrossing story about interesting people, it’s likely to be endlessly fascinating.
Our evolving view of the solar system
Forget the poster or mobile of the solar system you were showed in school. Remember? There were nine balls of somewhat varying size circling a light bulb or a yellow sphere, and that was it. But that doesn’t even scratch the surface of the reality as astronomers know it today.
What’s really out there
The eight planets—Pluto was demoted to the status of a dwarf planet in 2006—together possess hundreds of moons. Yes, hundreds. Seventy-nine of them circle Jupiter alone (and some believe there are really more than one hundred). It turns out that, unlike Earth, most planets have more than one moon. And, of course, there are millions of asteroids, too, most of which also circle the sun in what is aptly called the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter. There’s even another dwarf planet among the asteroids: Ceres.
The relative sizes
Forget that light bulb. The sun is inconceivably bigger than even Jupiter, the largest of the planets. Our friend Sol contains 99.8% of all the matter in the solar system. (About one million Earths could fit inside the sun.) And Jupiter holds most of the rest. It’s two-and-a-half times the mass of all the other seven planets put together. So, when you encounter someone likening the Earth to a tiny speck of sand in the vastness of the universe, believe it.
The distances
Astronomers measure distances within the solar system in Astronomical Units (AU). One AU is equal to the average distance of the Earth from the sun, or about 93 million miles. Of course, Venus and Mercury are much closer to the sun, and Mars is just a little bit more distant. But all the rest of all the stuff that circles our star is much, much farther out. Jupiter, the fifth planet out, orbits the sun at an average distance of 5.2 AU, or 484 million miles. The other three gas giants that comprise the outer planets lie far further out: Saturn (9.5 AU, or 887 million miles), Uranus (19.2 AU, or 1.8 billion miles), Neptune (30 AU, or 2.8 billion miles).
But there’s even more
Far, far beyond the orbit of Neptune stretch two inconceivably broad belts of other stuff. First, between 30 and 50 AU, or roughly 2.8 and 4.7 billion miles from us, lies the Kuiper Belt. Then, much further out—between 2,000 and as many as 100,000 AU, or 186 billion and 9.3 trillion miles out—lies the Oort cloud, which may extend one-quarter of the way toward Alpha Centauri, the star that’s nearest the sun. That’s 4.2 light-years away. And a light-year is 63,241 times an AU. Compared to these faraway places, the mission to Europa will be a walk in the park.
A word about travel times
Given today’s state-of-the-art technology, a trip to the moon takes about three days. To Mars, it’s a matter of around seven months. Now get this: “It took seven years for Cassini to reach Saturn. Seven! Galileo took six years to reach Jupiter. Voyager 2 took twelve to turn up at Neptune.” So, when planetary scientists talk casually about a mission to Europa, they’re thinking about a journey that will take at least two-and-a-half years if approached directly. But the Europa Clipper, as presently planned, will not go there in a straight line. Instead, it will employ gravity assist, first around Mars, then around Earth. The full journey to cover 390 million miles—at an average speed of 8,100 miles per hour!—will take five-and-a-half years.
Five central characters
Although Brown’s cast of characters is three pages long, and historical figures including Wernher von Braun and Carl Sagan enter into the tale in significant ways, five less-well-known people play especially prominent roles in the story. All five have been engaged year after year in realizing the dream of planetary scientists for a mission to Europa.
Bob Pappalardo
Robert Pappalardo‘s story begins in Brown’s first chapter. He started work as Europa Mission Project Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California in 2006. His work with NASA began from 1995 to 2001 as a researcher at Brown University, when he worked to plan many of the Galileo observations of Jupiter’s icy Galilean satellites. From 2001-2006, he was an Assistant Professor of Planetary Sciences in the Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences Department of the University of Colorado at Boulder. As Brown notes, “By the time Bob took the job in Boulder, if he wasn’t yet the world’s foremost expert on Jupiter’s icy moons, and Europa and Ganymede in particular, even the world’s most foremost expert might think he was.” Pappalardo’s research focuses on processes that have shaped the icy satellites of the outer solar system, especially Europa and the role of its probable subsurface ocean. He holds a PhD in Geology from Arizona State University. If there is a single protagonist in this tale of the upcoming mission to Europa, that may be Bob Pappalardo.
Louise Prockter
Like Bob Pappalardo, Louise Prockter surfaces in this tale in the very first chapter as a graduate student. She is a geomorphologist, a scientist who studies the origin and evolution of topographical features both on land and below the sea. Geomorphologists seek to understand why landscapes look the way they do. Given the peculiar features of the surface on Europa, Prockter’s inquiries merit high priority. She is the former supervisor of the Planetary Exploration Group at the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory. It was Prockter’s discovery of plate tectonics on Europa that helped ensure the approval of Europa Clipper. She received a Ph.D. in planetary geology from Brown University in 1999. Prockter now serves as Director of the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) in Houston, Texas.
Don Blankenship
Don Blankenship‘s current research is focused on understanding the West Antarctic rift system. He uses both airborne and ground-based geophysical techniques, including laser altimetry and radar sounding, among other techniques, to investigate the dynamics of large ice sheets and subglacial geology. Blankenship’s expertise in radar sounding and ice sheets—he is one of the world’s leading scholars in that field—proved instrumental in conceiving the various plans to explore Jupiter’s icy moons that culminated in the mission to Europa now called the Europa Clipper. After all, the almost certain presence of a deep ocean far beneath Europa’s frozen surface is the principal reason for planetary scientists’ desire to study the moon. He had been involved in the work at NASA since 1998. He is currently a Senior Research Scientist at the University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Geophysics.
Curt Niebur
Curt Niebur was “a green, almost entirely anonymous functionary at NASA headquarters” when he was asked to serve as Program Scientist of a precursor to the Europa Clipper mission, called JIMO—short for Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter. His LinkedIn bio reveals, “As a Program Scientist I work on robotic space science missions at all stages from formulation through operations.” What doesn’t emerge on LinkedIn is that Niebur has been instrumental in driving the Europa Clipper mission from plan to reality. Niebur’s role in the evolution of the mission to Europa was to poke and prod at the planetary scientists at Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Applied Physics Laboratory. He “had made it clear that . . . Europa had better bring its A game because no nod was assured” even though the Europa mission had already been selected as NASA’s number two priority!
Ed Weiler
Ed Weiler was the guy at NASA headquarters who kept pulling the rug out from under the planetary scientists plugging for a mission to Europa . . . until he didn’t. (“There was this guy running the science division, Ed Weiler, and it seemed like it was the man’s life work to kill the probe.”) Until his retirement in 2011—Weiler had worked at NASA since 1978—he was the Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. He holds a PhD in astrophysics from Northwestern University, which he received in 1976.
If you read histories involving the CIA, the State Department, or many other Washington-based federal departments and agencies, you’ll stumble across multitudes of officials with degrees, often advanced degrees, from the nation’s elite schools. Harvard, Yale, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Princeton, Columbia—they crop up again and again. Not so with NASA. It’s remarkable how few of the scientists and engineers profiled in The Mission hold degrees from the country’s top schools in engineering and science (MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Harvard).
The drama
NASA’s consistent focus on Mars
Ever since Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon, NASA’s top priority has always been to aim for a human mission to Mars. For decades, the red planet has gobbled up the lion’s share of the talent, funding, and attention whenever NASA, Congress, and the public have focused on space exploration. To date, there have been 49 missions to Mars, including efforts by the Soviet Union and later Russia, the European Space Agency, India, China, and the United Arab Emirates. But as I write only NASA has managed to land a spacecraft—always robotic—on the planet’s surface. In its fourteen attempts, it has succeeded eight times. The cost of all these missions runs to many billions in an era when funding for space has been increasingly difficult to secure. (NASA accounted for 0.48 percent of the federal budget for 2020.) Small wonder, then, that advocates of missions to the outer planets have run into roadblocks.
And therein lies the drama in David Brown’s tale of extraordinary dedication and persistence.
A long, tortuous planning process
“For any planetary body,” Brown explains, “the order of missions went: flyby, orbiter, lander, rover, sample return, astronaut. That’s how Apollo did it.” To date, Europa has been explored exclusively by flyby missions of Galileo. There was a long, long way to go until NASA would even contemplate anything more adventurous. But that didn’t stop the planetary science community from trying. “In seventeen years, there had been eighty-five people, cumulatively, on six science definition teams: Europa Orbiter through 1999, JIMO through 2004, Europa Jupiter System Mission through 2010, the Europa Habitability Mission through 2012, and Europa Clipper through 2014.”
One frustration after another
Just in case it isn’t clear, none of these missions even got off the drawing board until Europa Clipper finally secured a green light from NASA. Years of work by talented scientists and engineers and thousands, even millions of dollars went into planning each of these missions. Then something—usually budgetary limitations, sometimes just Ed Weiler changing the rules of the game—got in the way, and the planning process was halted. It was lot like having Lucy snatch the football away from Charlie Brown at the last minute.
In the end
“In the end,” Brown writes, “it would take seventeen years, six major studies, multiple missions approved, multiple missions abandoned, friendships formed and enmities established, funding raised and budgets lost, congressional hearings, unlikely alliances, technological breakthroughs, terrible losses, and stunning discoveries to get NASA to make it official.” It now appears certain that, sometime within the next two or three years, the Clipper mission to Europa will actually lift off from Earth.
About the author
David W. Brown is a New Orleans-based author whose work generally concerns the space program. He devoted seven years of intensive research and interviews to compile this engaging story of the forthcoming mission to Europa. Brown contributes regularly to The Atlantic, The New York Times, and Scientific American. He is a former U.S. Army paratrooper and a veteran of Afghanistan.
In prose that at times calls to mind the stylistic pyrotechnics of Tom Wolfe in The Right Stuff, Brown follows the brilliant scientists, engineers, and managers at NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Applied Physics Laboratory, and other facilities that became involved over the two-decade period during which the Clipper mission to Europa came to fruition. For anyone with even a modicum of interest in space travel or the ways and means of Big Science, or simply an engrossing story about interesting people, it’s likely to be endlessly fascinating.
Our evolving view of the solar system
Forget the poster or mobile of the solar system you were showed in school. Remember? There were nine balls of somewhat varying size circling a light bulb or a yellow sphere, and that was it. But that doesn’t even scratch the surface of the reality as astronomers know it today.
What’s really out there
The eight planets—Pluto was demoted to the status of a dwarf planet in 2006—together possess hundreds of moons. Yes, hundreds. Seventy-nine of them circle Jupiter alone (and some believe there are really more than one hundred). It turns out that, unlike Earth, most planets have more than one moon. And, of course, there are millions of asteroids, too, most of which also circle the sun in what is aptly called the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter. There’s even another dwarf planet among the asteroids: Ceres.
The relative sizes
Forget that light bulb. The sun is inconceivably bigger than even Jupiter, the largest of the planets. Our friend Sol contains 99.8% of all the matter in the solar system. (About one million Earths could fit inside the sun.) And Jupiter holds most of the rest. It’s two-and-a-half times the mass of all the other seven planets put together. So, when you encounter someone likening the Earth to a tiny speck of sand in the vastness of the universe, believe it.
The distances
Astronomers measure distances within the solar system in Astronomical Units (AU). One AU is equal to the average distance of the Earth from the sun, or about 93 million miles. Of course, Venus and Mercury are much closer to the sun, and Mars is just a little bit more distant. But all the rest of all the stuff that circles our star is much, much farther out. Jupiter, the fifth planet out, orbits the sun at an average distance of 5.2 AU, or 484 million miles. The other three gas giants that comprise the outer planets lie far further out: Saturn (9.5 AU, or 887 million miles), Uranus (19.2 AU, or 1.8 billion miles), Neptune (30 AU, or 2.8 billion miles).
But there’s even more
Far, far beyond the orbit of Neptune stretch two inconceivably broad belts of other stuff. First, between 30 and 50 AU, or roughly 2.8 and 4.7 billion miles from us, lies the Kuiper Belt. Then, much further out—between 2,000 and as many as 100,000 AU, or 186 billion and 9.3 trillion miles out—lies the Oort cloud, which may extend one-quarter of the way toward Alpha Centauri, the star that’s nearest the sun. That’s 4.2 light-years away. And a light-year is 63,241 times an AU. Compared to these faraway places, the mission to Europa will be a walk in the park.
A word about travel times
Given today’s state-of-the-art technology, a trip to the moon takes about three days. To Mars, it’s a matter of around seven months. Now get this: “It took seven years for Cassini to reach Saturn. Seven! Galileo took six years to reach Jupiter. Voyager 2 took twelve to turn up at Neptune.” So, when planetary scientists talk casually about a mission to Europa, they’re thinking about a journey that will take at least two-and-a-half years if approached directly. But the Europa Clipper, as presently planned, will not go there in a straight line. Instead, it will employ gravity assist, first around Mars, then around Earth. The full journey to cover 390 million miles—at an average speed of 8,100 miles per hour!—will take five-and-a-half years.
Five central characters
Although Brown’s cast of characters is three pages long, and historical figures including Wernher von Braun and Carl Sagan enter into the tale in significant ways, five less-well-known people play especially prominent roles in the story. All five have been engaged year after year in realizing the dream of planetary scientists for a mission to Europa.
Bob Pappalardo
Robert Pappalardo‘s story begins in Brown’s first chapter. He started work as Europa Mission Project Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California in 2006. His work with NASA began from 1995 to 2001 as a researcher at Brown University, when he worked to plan many of the Galileo observations of Jupiter’s icy Galilean satellites. From 2001-2006, he was an Assistant Professor of Planetary Sciences in the Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences Department of the University of Colorado at Boulder. As Brown notes, “By the time Bob took the job in Boulder, if he wasn’t yet the world’s foremost expert on Jupiter’s icy moons, and Europa and Ganymede in particular, even the world’s most foremost expert might think he was.” Pappalardo’s research focuses on processes that have shaped the icy satellites of the outer solar system, especially Europa and the role of its probable subsurface ocean. He holds a PhD in Geology from Arizona State University. If there is a single protagonist in this tale of the upcoming mission to Europa, that may be Bob Pappalardo.
Louise Prockter
Like Bob Pappalardo, Louise Prockter surfaces in this tale in the very first chapter as a graduate student. She is a geomorphologist, a scientist who studies the origin and evolution of topographical features both on land and below the sea. Geomorphologists seek to understand why landscapes look the way they do. Given the peculiar features of the surface on Europa, Prockter’s inquiries merit high priority. She is the former supervisor of the Planetary Exploration Group at the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory. It was Prockter’s discovery of plate tectonics on Europa that helped ensure the approval of Europa Clipper. She received a Ph.D. in planetary geology from Brown University in 1999. Prockter now serves as Director of the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) in Houston, Texas.
Don Blankenship
Don Blankenship‘s current research is focused on understanding the West Antarctic rift system. He uses both airborne and ground-based geophysical techniques, including laser altimetry and radar sounding, among other techniques, to investigate the dynamics of large ice sheets and subglacial geology. Blankenship’s expertise in radar sounding and ice sheets—he is one of the world’s leading scholars in that field—proved instrumental in conceiving the various plans to explore Jupiter’s icy moons that culminated in the mission to Europa now called the Europa Clipper. After all, the almost certain presence of a deep ocean far beneath Europa’s frozen surface is the principal reason for planetary scientists’ desire to study the moon. He had been involved in the work at NASA since 1998. He is currently a Senior Research Scientist at the University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Geophysics.
Curt Niebur
Curt Niebur was “a green, almost entirely anonymous functionary at NASA headquarters” when he was asked to serve as Program Scientist of a precursor to the Europa Clipper mission, called JIMO—short for Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter. His LinkedIn bio reveals, “As a Program Scientist I work on robotic space science missions at all stages from formulation through operations.” What doesn’t emerge on LinkedIn is that Niebur has been instrumental in driving the Europa Clipper mission from plan to reality. Niebur’s role in the evolution of the mission to Europa was to poke and prod at the planetary scientists at Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Applied Physics Laboratory. He “had made it clear that . . . Europa had better bring its A game because no nod was assured” even though the Europa mission had already been selected as NASA’s number two priority!
Ed Weiler
Ed Weiler was the guy at NASA headquarters who kept pulling the rug out from under the planetary scientists plugging for a mission to Europa . . . until he didn’t. (“There was this guy running the science division, Ed Weiler, and it seemed like it was the man’s life work to kill the probe.”) Until his retirement in 2011—Weiler had worked at NASA since 1978—he was the Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. He holds a PhD in astrophysics from Northwestern University, which he received in 1976.
If you read histories involving the CIA, the State Department, or many other Washington-based federal departments and agencies, you’ll stumble across multitudes of officials with degrees, often advanced degrees, from the nation’s elite schools. Harvard, Yale, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Princeton, Columbia—they crop up again and again. Not so with NASA. It’s remarkable how few of the scientists and engineers profiled in The Mission hold degrees from the country’s top schools in engineering and science (MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Harvard).
The drama
NASA’s consistent focus on Mars
Ever since Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon, NASA’s top priority has always been to aim for a human mission to Mars. For decades, the red planet has gobbled up the lion’s share of the talent, funding, and attention whenever NASA, Congress, and the public have focused on space exploration. To date, there have been 49 missions to Mars, including efforts by the Soviet Union and later Russia, the European Space Agency, India, China, and the United Arab Emirates. But as I write only NASA has managed to land a spacecraft—always robotic—on the planet’s surface. In its fourteen attempts, it has succeeded eight times. The cost of all these missions runs to many billions in an era when funding for space has been increasingly difficult to secure. (NASA accounted for 0.48 percent of the federal budget for 2020.) Small wonder, then, that advocates of missions to the outer planets have run into roadblocks.
And therein lies the drama in David Brown’s tale of extraordinary dedication and persistence.
A long, tortuous planning process
“For any planetary body,” Brown explains, “the order of missions went: flyby, orbiter, lander, rover, sample return, astronaut. That’s how Apollo did it.” To date, Europa has been explored exclusively by flyby missions of Galileo. There was a long, long way to go until NASA would even contemplate anything more adventurous. But that didn’t stop the planetary science community from trying. “In seventeen years, there had been eighty-five people, cumulatively, on six science definition teams: Europa Orbiter through 1999, JIMO through 2004, Europa Jupiter System Mission through 2010, the Europa Habitability Mission through 2012, and Europa Clipper through 2014.”
One frustration after another
Just in case it isn’t clear, none of these missions even got off the drawing board until Europa Clipper finally secured a green light from NASA. Years of work by talented scientists and engineers and thousands, even millions of dollars went into planning each of these missions. Then something—usually budgetary limitations, sometimes just Ed Weiler changing the rules of the game—got in the way, and the planning process was halted. It was lot like having Lucy snatch the football away from Charlie Brown at the last minute.
In the end
“In the end,” Brown writes, “it would take seventeen years, six major studies, multiple missions approved, multiple missions abandoned, friendships formed and enmities established, funding raised and budgets lost, congressional hearings, unlikely alliances, technological breakthroughs, terrible losses, and stunning discoveries to get NASA to make it official.” It now appears certain that, sometime within the next two or three years, the Clipper mission to Europa will actually lift off from Earth.
About the author
David W. Brown is a New Orleans-based author whose work generally concerns the space program. He devoted seven years of intensive research and interviews to compile this engaging story of the forthcoming mission to Europa. Brown contributes regularly to The Atlantic, The New York Times, and Scientific American. He is a former U.S. Army paratrooper and a veteran of Afghanistan.
June 15, 2021
The Mission touches on a lot of interesting subjects - the exploration of the outer planets and the search for extraterrestrial life, the process and science of designing a space mission, how NASA decides among competing priorities - but brings none of these together into a coherent narrative.
The book is nominally about a planned mission to the Jovian moon Europa, which has an ocean under miles of ice and has been identified as the most likely source of alien life in the solar system. But I found it to be frustratingly unfocused and meandering, flitting between the history of previous missions, the development of the Europa mission, and the extended biographies of the dozen scientists, mission managers and politicians responsible for the mission, sprinkled with tidbits of rocket science and space facts. It jumps back and forth in time, and is awash in so many trivial details that I could never figure out what I needed to recall to understand the book, whether it was the names of random scientists or amounts appropriated by Congress - at one point there is an appropriation of $75 million, but then it explains that it really turned out to be only $68 million because of subsequent Congressional action - is this important? I don't know, because it never became clear what the book was really about. Is it space exploration, space politics, history?
There were interesting things in the book about the possibility of life on Europa, how NASA works behind-the-scenes, and how complicated it is to get a mission off the ground. But The Mission was a slog that I could barely get through. It's not just too much detail and too hard to follow; it's also a long book, and there's only so long that tales of Powerpoint presentations and inter-department battles for funding can hold my attention.
The book is nominally about a planned mission to the Jovian moon Europa, which has an ocean under miles of ice and has been identified as the most likely source of alien life in the solar system. But I found it to be frustratingly unfocused and meandering, flitting between the history of previous missions, the development of the Europa mission, and the extended biographies of the dozen scientists, mission managers and politicians responsible for the mission, sprinkled with tidbits of rocket science and space facts. It jumps back and forth in time, and is awash in so many trivial details that I could never figure out what I needed to recall to understand the book, whether it was the names of random scientists or amounts appropriated by Congress - at one point there is an appropriation of $75 million, but then it explains that it really turned out to be only $68 million because of subsequent Congressional action - is this important? I don't know, because it never became clear what the book was really about. Is it space exploration, space politics, history?
There were interesting things in the book about the possibility of life on Europa, how NASA works behind-the-scenes, and how complicated it is to get a mission off the ground. But The Mission was a slog that I could barely get through. It's not just too much detail and too hard to follow; it's also a long book, and there's only so long that tales of Powerpoint presentations and inter-department battles for funding can hold my attention.
February 14, 2021
This book is infused with the DNA of Truman Capote. If In Cold Blood was a non-fiction, true crime novel, The Mission is a true science (as apposed to Sci-Fi) non-fiction novel. It is very much character-driven, and filled with the kinds of linguistic flourishes generally reserved for fiction.
February 7, 2021
Even with robots, it's people who explore space
If you loved the books about Curiosity, you're gonna love this. As a retired computer software and systems engineer, I can tell you that it's not just technology and innovative ideas, it's individuals and organizations. If you want to build Big Stuff, it takes a team. And if you want to build Really Big Stuff, it takes a large well managed, well financed organization. And that's what this book is about: the Mission.
Oh and I came away even more convinced than I was, that there is probably life, "fish", in the ocean of Europa. I'd be surprised if there isn't.
If you loved the books about Curiosity, you're gonna love this. As a retired computer software and systems engineer, I can tell you that it's not just technology and innovative ideas, it's individuals and organizations. If you want to build Big Stuff, it takes a team. And if you want to build Really Big Stuff, it takes a large well managed, well financed organization. And that's what this book is about: the Mission.
Oh and I came away even more convinced than I was, that there is probably life, "fish", in the ocean of Europa. I'd be surprised if there isn't.
December 6, 2020
Received as an ARC via my employer Barnes & Noble. Once you've read the subtitle of this book you know the plot! It's the true story of how a seemingly mismatched group of people come together to develop a program with appropriate designs and costs to send a rocket and lander to Europa (a moon of Jupiter). The similarities among this group are an unending fascination with planetary sciences; academic brilliance; the ability to function as a team; intense curiosity; and perseverance (sometimes for years!). The back stories of many NASA projects are truly amazing. The conflicts seem to never end: funding and Congress, battling personalities, agency competitiveness, countries seeking glory, and competing problem solutions. This book would make an excellent documentary.
March 2, 2021
A breakneck ride through the world of NASA funding and interplanetary mission rivalries that's begging to be adapted into a Sorkin HBO drama series. All of this revolves around the battle to get funding and the green light for the Europa Clipper mission, which will be able to reveal the marine world hiding beneath Europa's icy service. This makes mundane phone conversations between NASA project scientists and the Decadal Survey feel full of drama as scientists and researchers spend their entire life working on projects and developing missions that may never launch in their lifetimes. It's about perseverance and an insatiable, intergenerational curiosity that drives space programs year after year.
February 25, 2021
The Mission, David W. Brown, 2021
We all just witnessed the landing of Perseverance Rover on the plain of a Marian crater. We were awed by the impeccable cutting-edge engineering, the sheer audacity of the whole endeavor. We saw the cheering engineers and scientists at the mission control room at JPL. But what is JPL? Who are the engineers and scientists behind this amazing technological achievement? How does a project like this get funded in the yearly, byzantine, and contentious congressional process?
JPL is an almost collegiate campus like institution harbored in the hills of Pasadena, California. It is associated with and managed by Caltech University but all its funding and its raision-d’etre is as the functional scientific mission branch of NASA. It has a storied history of hundreds of scientific tours de forces such as the Voyager spacecraft, one of which still functions on the outer reaches of the solar system almost 50 years after its launch, the Galileo probe to Jupiter, the Cassini probe to Saturn, the Kepler and Hubble space telescopes, Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on Mars and this is just to name a few of the labs scientific triumphs.
But this book is not about any of the missions you have heard about so far. This is the story of a dedicated, brilliant team of planetary scientists and spacecraft engineers that have spent most of their careers, decades promoting a mission to the Jovian moon Europa. Why Europa? James Green, the head of planetary science at NASA explains: “What are we talking about when we talk about life on another world? –the habitability triad: water, energy, and chemistry, -- and how only with all three you get life as We Know It, and, by the way: Europa has all three”. Previous probes such as Galileo and recent information from the Hubble space telescope have confirmed that Europa has water, lots of it, in fact more than planet earth: an ice layer about 12 miles thick, below which is a warm ocean approximately 50 miles deep. Below that is a rocky core. At Europa’s south pole hydrothermal vents similar to Yellowstone’s Old faithful spout water vapor hundreds of miles into space. The moons surface apparently has ice plate tectonics similar to Earth where water from below is extruded onto the surface and pushes huge ice sheets. Scientists in pursuit of extra-terrestrial life have been intrigued by this alien world for decades and some of them at JPL have had an obsessive compulsion to bring about a mission to Europa for decades.
As you might guess politics plays as an important part in this story as the actual science itself. Within JPL each particular mission has its own separate scientific and engineering staff. Each staff competes for the limited budget Congress and NASA allocates to planetary exploration. In this particular story the Europa team promotes its mission over and over for decades only to be eclipsed by other sexier, more WOW, more photogenic missions such as the Mar’s rovers. Yet they are undeterred and keep coming back again and again to promote their cause, their obsession. Actually, getting your project approved by top administrators at NASA is not the end of the struggle because each year the NASA budget is debated and voted on by Congress. Here’s how Brown describes the process: “It is one thing to send something hundreds of millions of miles to distant worlds of frost and fire. If you wanted a real challenge, try sending a proposal ---to the higher floors at NASA headquarters and higher links on the NASA chain. Then try and get it a mile and a half down the road to the White House Office of Management and Budget, and from there, another mile to Capital Hill as part of the annual budget request, and then back and forth from House and Senate, 300 feet at a go – I’m just a bill… - and then a final mile to the oval office for the President’s signature”.
The book tells an amazing story of perseverance, in 2015, 17 years after the first scientific proposal, after thousands of pages of rejected proposals, the project was finally approved and given the go-ahead with a 2.5-Billion-dollar budget. That this happened at all can be partially attributed to an obscure Texas Congressman, Jon Culberson, head of House Ways and Means who was a fellow space junky fully committed to making the mission to Europa a reality. As of now The Europa Clipper is set to launch in 2024 and arrive at Europa in 2030. If you are still around then watch for this!
I am also a space junky. One of my first jobs out of engineering school was at the Cape as a Mechanical Systems Engineer on the Titan 3C launch team. One thing that was cemented in my consciousness from my time there was the absolutely unforgiving nature of the space launch business. I can attest from personal experience that even the most mundane, inane and seemingly insignificant mistake can lead to an explosive catastrophe that has a cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Because of this rather jarring experience in my past, I am totally impressed and blown away with the audacious, meticulous, unforgiving nature of the engineering and quality control that was involved in sending a space craft to a destination 130 million miles away and perfectly sticking a landing on an alien planet as we have just witnessed. Kudos to all the dedicated and skilled people at JPL that made this amazing landing happen.
What would happen if we found life on Europa? How would that change our perception as human beings? The author makes a rather interesting metaphor at the books end: “A house cat might go her entire life believing she is the only house cat in the world. She has her caretakers – her metaphorical gods – and if she is kind, shows love and devotion, there will be food and water and comfort when there is hunger, injury, or illness. The metaphysics of Felis Catus allow it to stretch on the back of a sofa and lie on a stack of papers because it is at the center of the universe. What more peaceful place could there be? ---Humankind has had a good run as the only housecat in the world. But once we learn of others, how would things change?
If you are a space junky read this book, if you are curious about the inner working and the amazing men and woman of JPL read this book. JACK
We all just witnessed the landing of Perseverance Rover on the plain of a Marian crater. We were awed by the impeccable cutting-edge engineering, the sheer audacity of the whole endeavor. We saw the cheering engineers and scientists at the mission control room at JPL. But what is JPL? Who are the engineers and scientists behind this amazing technological achievement? How does a project like this get funded in the yearly, byzantine, and contentious congressional process?
JPL is an almost collegiate campus like institution harbored in the hills of Pasadena, California. It is associated with and managed by Caltech University but all its funding and its raision-d’etre is as the functional scientific mission branch of NASA. It has a storied history of hundreds of scientific tours de forces such as the Voyager spacecraft, one of which still functions on the outer reaches of the solar system almost 50 years after its launch, the Galileo probe to Jupiter, the Cassini probe to Saturn, the Kepler and Hubble space telescopes, Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on Mars and this is just to name a few of the labs scientific triumphs.
But this book is not about any of the missions you have heard about so far. This is the story of a dedicated, brilliant team of planetary scientists and spacecraft engineers that have spent most of their careers, decades promoting a mission to the Jovian moon Europa. Why Europa? James Green, the head of planetary science at NASA explains: “What are we talking about when we talk about life on another world? –the habitability triad: water, energy, and chemistry, -- and how only with all three you get life as We Know It, and, by the way: Europa has all three”. Previous probes such as Galileo and recent information from the Hubble space telescope have confirmed that Europa has water, lots of it, in fact more than planet earth: an ice layer about 12 miles thick, below which is a warm ocean approximately 50 miles deep. Below that is a rocky core. At Europa’s south pole hydrothermal vents similar to Yellowstone’s Old faithful spout water vapor hundreds of miles into space. The moons surface apparently has ice plate tectonics similar to Earth where water from below is extruded onto the surface and pushes huge ice sheets. Scientists in pursuit of extra-terrestrial life have been intrigued by this alien world for decades and some of them at JPL have had an obsessive compulsion to bring about a mission to Europa for decades.
As you might guess politics plays as an important part in this story as the actual science itself. Within JPL each particular mission has its own separate scientific and engineering staff. Each staff competes for the limited budget Congress and NASA allocates to planetary exploration. In this particular story the Europa team promotes its mission over and over for decades only to be eclipsed by other sexier, more WOW, more photogenic missions such as the Mar’s rovers. Yet they are undeterred and keep coming back again and again to promote their cause, their obsession. Actually, getting your project approved by top administrators at NASA is not the end of the struggle because each year the NASA budget is debated and voted on by Congress. Here’s how Brown describes the process: “It is one thing to send something hundreds of millions of miles to distant worlds of frost and fire. If you wanted a real challenge, try sending a proposal ---to the higher floors at NASA headquarters and higher links on the NASA chain. Then try and get it a mile and a half down the road to the White House Office of Management and Budget, and from there, another mile to Capital Hill as part of the annual budget request, and then back and forth from House and Senate, 300 feet at a go – I’m just a bill… - and then a final mile to the oval office for the President’s signature”.
The book tells an amazing story of perseverance, in 2015, 17 years after the first scientific proposal, after thousands of pages of rejected proposals, the project was finally approved and given the go-ahead with a 2.5-Billion-dollar budget. That this happened at all can be partially attributed to an obscure Texas Congressman, Jon Culberson, head of House Ways and Means who was a fellow space junky fully committed to making the mission to Europa a reality. As of now The Europa Clipper is set to launch in 2024 and arrive at Europa in 2030. If you are still around then watch for this!
I am also a space junky. One of my first jobs out of engineering school was at the Cape as a Mechanical Systems Engineer on the Titan 3C launch team. One thing that was cemented in my consciousness from my time there was the absolutely unforgiving nature of the space launch business. I can attest from personal experience that even the most mundane, inane and seemingly insignificant mistake can lead to an explosive catastrophe that has a cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Because of this rather jarring experience in my past, I am totally impressed and blown away with the audacious, meticulous, unforgiving nature of the engineering and quality control that was involved in sending a space craft to a destination 130 million miles away and perfectly sticking a landing on an alien planet as we have just witnessed. Kudos to all the dedicated and skilled people at JPL that made this amazing landing happen.
What would happen if we found life on Europa? How would that change our perception as human beings? The author makes a rather interesting metaphor at the books end: “A house cat might go her entire life believing she is the only house cat in the world. She has her caretakers – her metaphorical gods – and if she is kind, shows love and devotion, there will be food and water and comfort when there is hunger, injury, or illness. The metaphysics of Felis Catus allow it to stretch on the back of a sofa and lie on a stack of papers because it is at the center of the universe. What more peaceful place could there be? ---Humankind has had a good run as the only housecat in the world. But once we learn of others, how would things change?
If you are a space junky read this book, if you are curious about the inner working and the amazing men and woman of JPL read this book. JACK
June 20, 2021
A fascinating behind the scenes look at NASA's Europa mission. The characters are well drawn and motivations deeply explored from Congress, to JPL, to NASA, and other partners. Being a one-time wishful astronaut growing up and having to rely upon unmanned missions to our solar system this book gave me a fly on the wall aspect that I am always curious about. Quite enjoyable if not frustrating as it was for many of the characters involved.
I read this on my cell from time to time, so took quite a while...
I read this on my cell from time to time, so took quite a while...
June 17, 2025
Informative and insightful book about NASA space missions and specifically about the one to the Jupiter moon, Europa. However, so many moving parts and players that come in and out of the narrative that one gets lost in the flow or lack there of. Could warrant 4 stars, but…
February 27, 2021
I am a huge non-fiction fan and never heard of the term "creative non-fiction" before. This book is probably the pinnacle of this genre. I could not stop smiling while listening to this book. It is the perfect combination of mind blowing facts, suspense and literary flair. I immediately purchased David Brown's debut "Red Planet Noir" and looking forward to go to Mars with him after this long trip to Europa.
This book also had this rare impact of filling me with nail biting wonder to see the creatures swimming in the Europa ocean and yet realizing I probably don't have enough time to see a lander who would drill into it.
This book also had this rare impact of filling me with nail biting wonder to see the creatures swimming in the Europa ocean and yet realizing I probably don't have enough time to see a lander who would drill into it.
November 26, 2021
I learned a lot of fascinating things from this book, and I’m glad I read it. That said, I found it disappointing. The gold standard for this type of book is Chasing New Horizons, and this is far from that. While the overall story of the culture at NASA, and the space program at large, is interesting, the author goes into too much detail. There are too many players, spread through the whole book, and keeping track of who is who is enough of a chore that I didn’t bother to try as the book wore on. He also has a tendency to go into too much detail. Half a page describing the conference room at a Marriott?
This over-detailed tendency stems from his desire to create a fast-moving, seemingly-written-from-the-hip-with-the-same-level-of-daring-as-his-subjects, Tom Wolf-style presentation. I think he could actually pull that off with different subject matter, but this particular topic doesn’t need that kind of presentation. It’s amazing enough on its own, and no one’s life is on the line, so the “daring“ component isn’t really there, which makes his chosen style seem more silly than daring.
Still, there are some interesting things that I have not heard in other places. He does a good job of revealing the space program’s strange bias toward Mars, rather than the outer planets, where we stand a much better chance of finding life. And, as with all stories about these missions, the ridiculously steep uphill slog of making a project like this happen is amazing to behold.
This over-detailed tendency stems from his desire to create a fast-moving, seemingly-written-from-the-hip-with-the-same-level-of-daring-as-his-subjects, Tom Wolf-style presentation. I think he could actually pull that off with different subject matter, but this particular topic doesn’t need that kind of presentation. It’s amazing enough on its own, and no one’s life is on the line, so the “daring“ component isn’t really there, which makes his chosen style seem more silly than daring.
Still, there are some interesting things that I have not heard in other places. He does a good job of revealing the space program’s strange bias toward Mars, rather than the outer planets, where we stand a much better chance of finding life. And, as with all stories about these missions, the ridiculously steep uphill slog of making a project like this happen is amazing to behold.
May 13, 2025
Kitap harika fakat çeviri için aynı şeyi söyleyemeyeceğim malesef!
Gezegen biliminin veya uzay araçlarının teknik detaylarını okumak isteyen okuyucuların bu kitabı okurken biraz üzülebileceğini belirtmeliyim. Fakat! NASA veya uzay sektöründe çalışan bir şirkette bilim insanı, mühendis, proje yöneticisi olarak çalışan/çalışmayı isteyen biri bu kitapta çok şey bulacaktır. Uzay sektöründe calisan bir mühendis olarak kitaptan en çok tat aldığım şey biraz önce bahsettiğim durumdu sanirim. Kitabın size verdiği "bilim" ise açıkçası benim için doyurucuydu.
Gezegen bilimine ve uzay araclarina meraklı olanlar için bazı önemli kitap satır aralarında ve dipnotlarda bahsedilmiş, birçok NASA raporuna ve makaleye referans verilmiş.
Boş kitap kesinlikle degil, şiddetle tavsiye ediyorum!
Gezegen biliminin veya uzay araçlarının teknik detaylarını okumak isteyen okuyucuların bu kitabı okurken biraz üzülebileceğini belirtmeliyim. Fakat! NASA veya uzay sektöründe çalışan bir şirkette bilim insanı, mühendis, proje yöneticisi olarak çalışan/çalışmayı isteyen biri bu kitapta çok şey bulacaktır. Uzay sektöründe calisan bir mühendis olarak kitaptan en çok tat aldığım şey biraz önce bahsettiğim durumdu sanirim. Kitabın size verdiği "bilim" ise açıkçası benim için doyurucuydu.
Gezegen bilimine ve uzay araclarina meraklı olanlar için bazı önemli kitap satır aralarında ve dipnotlarda bahsedilmiş, birçok NASA raporuna ve makaleye referans verilmiş.
Boş kitap kesinlikle degil, şiddetle tavsiye ediyorum!
March 12, 2021
Hits the Popular Science Sweet Spot
This is a fine and interesting recounting of the progress to date of efforts to get a Europa science mission off the ground.
Some books like this are loaded with overly detailed biographies of the players and are densely packed with the intricate details of bureaucratic wrangling - all peppered with bits of grievance and payback. Some books are loosey-goosey superficial puff pieces. This book avoids all of those sorts of pitfalls. We see the development of the Europa project from the points of view mostly of all of the major players, with enough bio to give life to the actors and enough detail to drive home the complexity of the mission.
The book is well organized. We follow a time line of sorts, with chapters centered on important milestones in the development of the project. Around each of those clearly explained milestones the author spins out asides and digressions that provide background and context for the developments. This is where most of the science comes in. So, for example, you learn about how plumes of water vapor were discovered on Europa, why this was important as science, how and why this affected the involved scientists, and then how this finding was presented in the context of the budget and mission approval process.
The author's gift is the ability to mix all of this together in an engaging and accessible fashion, with no one aspect overpowering the other. You could consider this book as a case study on federal agency bureaucracy, or as a science text, or as you-are-there popular science, or as a series of biographical sketches of the real planetary scientists behind NASA's achievements. It works on every level. Can't ask for much more than that.
(Please note that I found this book while browsing the local library's Kindle books, and downloaded it for free. I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)
This is a fine and interesting recounting of the progress to date of efforts to get a Europa science mission off the ground.
Some books like this are loaded with overly detailed biographies of the players and are densely packed with the intricate details of bureaucratic wrangling - all peppered with bits of grievance and payback. Some books are loosey-goosey superficial puff pieces. This book avoids all of those sorts of pitfalls. We see the development of the Europa project from the points of view mostly of all of the major players, with enough bio to give life to the actors and enough detail to drive home the complexity of the mission.
The book is well organized. We follow a time line of sorts, with chapters centered on important milestones in the development of the project. Around each of those clearly explained milestones the author spins out asides and digressions that provide background and context for the developments. This is where most of the science comes in. So, for example, you learn about how plumes of water vapor were discovered on Europa, why this was important as science, how and why this affected the involved scientists, and then how this finding was presented in the context of the budget and mission approval process.
The author's gift is the ability to mix all of this together in an engaging and accessible fashion, with no one aspect overpowering the other. You could consider this book as a case study on federal agency bureaucracy, or as a science text, or as you-are-there popular science, or as a series of biographical sketches of the real planetary scientists behind NASA's achievements. It works on every level. Can't ask for much more than that.
(Please note that I found this book while browsing the local library's Kindle books, and downloaded it for free. I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)
November 4, 2021
The Mission is an excellent book for all space geeks. David W. Brown's writing turned what could have been a dry read into an exciting epic. I really rooted for the group of scientists who never gave up on the dream of sending a probe to Europa. I especially liked the last chapter, which goes into the ethical and philosophical considerations should the probe discover life in the ocean which covers Jupiter's icy moon. I checked on the mission's status after reading. It's set to launch in 2024. I'll be watching.
June 19, 2025
What i thought was going to be a book about our solar systems best chance at finding alien life turned into an amazing exploration of the determination of government workers, government budgetary processes, and the politics of space exploration. The writing is so fun and new and makes a book about research papers and nerdy scientists easy to read. If you love a tangent you will love this book.
April 13, 2021
This book is an absolute monstrosity. I have nothing against long books (okay maybe I do), but this one was tough. Don't get me wrong; Brown does an amazing job making a book primarily about paper studies and NASA budgets very interesting and suspenseful, and his first chapter made me laugh out loud. However, in many places the book feels like a conglomeration of 12 biographies with tangential personal histories. Nevertheless, Brown's writing is really enjoyable to read, an excellent conversational tone that really makes you feel like you know all the characters involved and definitely captures the struggle of exploring the universe with budgets tied to politics. Glad I came across this book, but probably won't want to dedicate time in the future to reread it.
February 22, 2022
Although the inside look at NASA, APL, JPL, and the thought processes behind making the Big Decisions was interesting, I did get bored to some extent by the detailing of the minutiae of the bureaucratic infighting. I was also at times annoyed by the "conversational" writing style, which I found abrasive (as one reviewer said, it was a "fast-moving, seemingly-written-from-the-hip-with-the-same-level-of-daring-as-his-subjects, Tom Wolf-style presentation" which occasionally worked, but for the most part, felt out of place). Because of these reasons, I can't give this more than a 3-star rating.
I was also very annoyed by the glorification of the Texas congressman who created a 26(!!!!)-lane highway where once there was a 6-lane highway. What an awful monstrosity.
I'm looking forward to when the spacecraft is actually on its way to Europa, though!
Oh, and one last note: how this book could not include a bibliography is beyond me.
I was also very annoyed by the glorification of the Texas congressman who created a 26(!!!!)-lane highway where once there was a 6-lane highway. What an awful monstrosity.
I'm looking forward to when the spacecraft is actually on its way to Europa, though!
Oh, and one last note: how this book could not include a bibliography is beyond me.
March 17, 2021
I won this in a goodreads.com giveaway.
A fascinating "how-it-gets-done" look at space exploration, the politics involved, with a bit of "is there life out there" thrown in to keep it really interesting.
Finally, learning science is fun!
Highly recommended.
A fascinating "how-it-gets-done" look at space exploration, the politics involved, with a bit of "is there life out there" thrown in to keep it really interesting.
Finally, learning science is fun!
Highly recommended.
March 28, 2021
The first singularity you’ll notice about THE MISSION by David W. Brown is its 82-word subtitle. The lettering takes up the lion share of the cover and pushes an image of Europa nearly out of view. It’s an apt metaphor for the many mysteries of this Jovian moon that are beyond our reach. There is a global ocean under the planet’s thick crust of ice that is three times larger than Earth’s and contains the three components thought vital to creating life as we know it: water, organic molecules, and chemical energy. Scientists guess that it takes five hundred million years to create a simple lifeform, and Europa’s ocean has existed for more than four billion.
Working within the outer planets community at NASA, is a small team of steadfast scientists that has built and rebuilt the future space mission to Europa. Now back to that subtitle:
How a Disciple of Carl Sagan, an Ex-Motocross Racer, a Texas Tea Party Congressman, the World's Worst Typewriter Saleswoman, California Mountain People, and an Anonymous NASA Functionary Went to War with Mars, Survived an Insurgency at Saturn, Traded Blows with Washington, and Stole a Ride on an Alabama Moon Rocket to Send a Space Robot to Jupiter in Search of the Second Garden of Eden at the Bottom of an Alien Ocean Inside of an Ice World Called Europa (A True Story).
It’s the most artful book summary I’ve ever seen. That Brown could condense 380 pages filled with detailed personal backgrounds, innerworkings of NASA, the Big Bang Theory, early astronomy, planetary geology, Washington politics, military strategy, and even 2001: A Space Odyssey trivia, into such playful language speaks to Brown’s talent as a writer.
The pace is exploratory as each member of the team is introduced with backstory leading up to the present. As a team collaborating behind the scenes at NASA, they solve seemingly impossible challenges: maximizing scientific outcomes with equipment that can withstand the Jovian radiation belt, reaching Europa’s liquid water below 19-25 kilometers of ice, and competing against rival teams for billions of dollars in a zero-sum game amid budget reductions.
David W. Brown’s research is faultless. Any reader will be gobsmacked by his level of detail, but where Brown shines is creative non-fiction. His dynamic literary prose is brimming with personality that is friendly and fun-loving, but still sharp with perfect comedic timing. No other writer could have delivered this story in the same way. Here’s Brown giving our first glimpse of Europa:
“Looking down and to the horizon, an astronaut on Europa is casting her eyes across a post-apocalyptic Antarctica: an endless tundra of gashed ice. In places, it is snowman white—the stuff of pure water. Elsewhere, it is sepia, seared and poisoned by the radiation belt into which Europa is submerged. Those gashes: in shadows they are cinnamon, scarlet, sienna, and they break up the landscape as though the whole world had been smashed on a marble floor and then reassembled haphazardly. There are steep cliffs and deep troughs and Grand Canyons of ice the color of prison cells.”
As much as Brown can wax poetic about planets and their moons, he can also deliver a swift, philosophical punch to the gut: “The Dark Ages are always only a day away.” Packed with science and human insight, books like THE MISSION are the light that keep those Dark Ages at bay.
Working within the outer planets community at NASA, is a small team of steadfast scientists that has built and rebuilt the future space mission to Europa. Now back to that subtitle:
How a Disciple of Carl Sagan, an Ex-Motocross Racer, a Texas Tea Party Congressman, the World's Worst Typewriter Saleswoman, California Mountain People, and an Anonymous NASA Functionary Went to War with Mars, Survived an Insurgency at Saturn, Traded Blows with Washington, and Stole a Ride on an Alabama Moon Rocket to Send a Space Robot to Jupiter in Search of the Second Garden of Eden at the Bottom of an Alien Ocean Inside of an Ice World Called Europa (A True Story).
It’s the most artful book summary I’ve ever seen. That Brown could condense 380 pages filled with detailed personal backgrounds, innerworkings of NASA, the Big Bang Theory, early astronomy, planetary geology, Washington politics, military strategy, and even 2001: A Space Odyssey trivia, into such playful language speaks to Brown’s talent as a writer.
The pace is exploratory as each member of the team is introduced with backstory leading up to the present. As a team collaborating behind the scenes at NASA, they solve seemingly impossible challenges: maximizing scientific outcomes with equipment that can withstand the Jovian radiation belt, reaching Europa’s liquid water below 19-25 kilometers of ice, and competing against rival teams for billions of dollars in a zero-sum game amid budget reductions.
David W. Brown’s research is faultless. Any reader will be gobsmacked by his level of detail, but where Brown shines is creative non-fiction. His dynamic literary prose is brimming with personality that is friendly and fun-loving, but still sharp with perfect comedic timing. No other writer could have delivered this story in the same way. Here’s Brown giving our first glimpse of Europa:
“Looking down and to the horizon, an astronaut on Europa is casting her eyes across a post-apocalyptic Antarctica: an endless tundra of gashed ice. In places, it is snowman white—the stuff of pure water. Elsewhere, it is sepia, seared and poisoned by the radiation belt into which Europa is submerged. Those gashes: in shadows they are cinnamon, scarlet, sienna, and they break up the landscape as though the whole world had been smashed on a marble floor and then reassembled haphazardly. There are steep cliffs and deep troughs and Grand Canyons of ice the color of prison cells.”
As much as Brown can wax poetic about planets and their moons, he can also deliver a swift, philosophical punch to the gut: “The Dark Ages are always only a day away.” Packed with science and human insight, books like THE MISSION are the light that keep those Dark Ages at bay.
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