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?

Popular culture is flourishing again, with a renewed interest in the ET and UFO phenomena. We are inundated with films, TV programmes and books, plus many conspiracy theories, dealing with the phenomena. Governments and security agencies are denying any interest in the issue, yet releasing masses of documents (mostly unreadable) after being compelled to, by the Freedom of Information Act. Such speculation and documentation in ancient writings suggests that an unearthly presence has been in Earth-space for many generations. The question of this situation must reach a culminating point sometime in the near future. This book is concerned with the cultural shock and social disorientation that would obviously occur with a sudden appearance en-mass of an alien race finally revealing themselves to humanity and how the people of Earth would react.