Cornell University scientist Squyres is the principal investigator on the Mars missions that landed the rovers Spirit
and Opportunity
in January 2004. Expected to operate for only a few weeks, they are still going strong a year and a half later. But as Squyres recounts, their development was plagued with problems, and shortly before the launch of Spirit,
it looked like the missions might be scrubbed; the giant landing airbags had failed in test after test. Spirit
has endured a communications breakdown and a troublesome rear wheel, but Opportunity
quickly found geological evidence for the existence of water millions of years ago. Squyres relates the toll that monitoring the rovers took on his colleagues. The Martian day is 39 minutes longer than a day on Earth, so the team had to reset their watches and their internal clocks to work, eat and sleep like Martians. Squyres communicates the excitement and the anxieties involved in a project of this magnitude, steering clear of technical jargon, though more casual science buffs might want to fast-forward occasionally in early chapters packed with detail on the ins and outs of NASA's approval process for proposals and institutional politicking. 16 pages of color illus. not seen by PW
. Agent, Peter Matson.
(Aug. 3)
