In its eerie likeness to Earth, Mars has long captured our imaginations,both as a destination for humankind and as a possible home to extraterrestrial life. It is our twenty-first century New World its explorers robots, shipped 350 million miles from Earth to uncover the distant planet's secrets.Its most recent scout is Curiosity,a one-ton, Jeep-sized nuclear-powered space labouratory,which is now roving the Martian surface to determine whether the red planet has ever been physically capable of supporting life. In Red Rover , geochemist Roger Wiens, the principal investigator for the ChemCam laser instrument on the rover and veteran of numerous robotic NASA missions, tells the unlikely story of his involvement in sending sophisticated hardware into space, culminating in the Curiosity rover's amazing journey to Mars.In so doing, Wiens paints the portrait of one of the most exciting scientific stories of our time: the new era of robotic space exploration. Starting with NASA's introduction of the Discovery Program in 1992, scrappier, more nimble missions became the order of the day, as manned missions were confined to Earth orbit, and behemoth projects went extinct. This strategic shift presented huge scientific opportunities, but tight budgets meant that success depended more than ever on creative engineering and human ingenuity. Beginning with the Genesis mission that launched his career, Wiens describes the competitive, DIY spirit of these robotic enterprises, from conception to construction, from launch to heart-stopping crashes and smooth landings.An inspiring account of the real-life challenges of space exploration, Red Rover vividly narrates what goes into answering the question: is there life elsewhere in the universe?

Unless they research the subject for themselves, many people do not realise that the origins and development of the human entity are largely an unresolved mystery. Before the Author's own research, he was among them. He found that he also had been subtly indoctrinated with such remarks 'cousins' and 'relatives' with regard to the apes and assumed like most others, that all the facts where in. When you read the work, you will find that this is simply not true. So begins 'The Human Enigma', a truly epic enquiry into the origins of our world and the creatures that walk upon. In particular, it examines the human brain as a uniquely wonderful creation which can be viewed as a gift from God (or was it the gods?) besides Darwinian evolution and Biblical creation. This book explores the fanatic proposition that mankind's rapid development with regard to the human brain may have been influenced by extra terrestrial sources. This work refers to, and draws together the previous work of respected scientists and looks at the future scenarios that the latest genetic and environmental sciences are pointing towards.