Journey Beyond Selene: Remarkable Expeditions Past Our Moon and to the Ends of the Solar System

Unmanned spaceships have investigated all the planets in our solar system except Pluto. More significant to NASA's search for extraterrestrial life, these spaceships have also beamed back vivid closeups of 63 moons. For it is on moons like Jupiter's ice-covered satellite Europa that scientists believe we may discover primitive forms of life. Kluger, a writer for Time magazine and coauthor of the bestselling Lost Moon, does a terrific job of tracing the history of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, whose scientists have directed the unmanned exploration of space from the first failed attempts to land on earth's moon (Selene) to the Pioneer and Voyager missions that captured the public's imagination with their color photos of giant gas planets and bizarre moons. Kluger wisely doesn't dwell on the bureaucracy and infighting always present in an institution as large as JPL, but he does portray enough of it for readers to appreciate how pressured the staff were to produce a spacecraft that could reach the moon and send back pictures. Kluger's explanations of the technical hurdles faced in guiding a tiny spaceship close to as many planets as possible without either hitting them or being set off course by their gravity can be followed easily by anyone with a general science background. His descriptions of our small galactic neighborhood convey scientists' excitement about what we may find when a probe lands on one of these strange worlds. An enticing narrative of scientific exploration, this book is strongly recommended to anyone interested in the search for life in space. 8-page color insert. Agent, Joy Harris. (July)