Most amateur astronomers and many of those with similar interests but who are not currently practising observers have only a sketchy understanding of space flight. This book provides an introduction to its mechanics. The beauty of this book, written by an engineer who is also an accomplished science writer, is that it covers the subject comprehensively, and yet is almost entirely descriptive and non-mathematical. It deals with all aspects of space flight, from how to leave the Earth (including the design of the rocket, mission planning, navigation and communication), to life in space and the effects of weightlessness. The book also includes sections describing how an amateur can track satellites and understand their orbital parameters.

It has been called the single most historic event of the 20th century: On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins met John F. Kennedy's call for a manned Moon landing by the end of the 1960s. A decade of tests and training, a staff of 400,000 engineers and scientists, a budget of billions, and the most powerful rocket ever launched all combined in an unprecedented event watched by millions the world over. And no one captured the men, the mood, and the machinery like Norman Mailer. One of the greatest writers of the 20th century, Norman Mailer was hired by LIFE magazine in 1969 to cover the Moon shot. He enhanced his reportage in the brilliantly crafted book, Of a Fire on the Moon, which is excerpted here. Equally adept at examining the science of space travel and the psychology of the people involved-from Saturn V rocket engineer Wernher von Braun to the crucial NASA support staff to the three astronauts-Mailer provides provocative and trenchant insights into this epoch-making event. Illustrating this volume are hundreds of photographs and maps from the NASA vaults, magazine archives, and private collections. These images document the development of the agency and the mission, life inside the command module and on the Moon's surface, and the world's jubilant reaction to the landing. This 50-year anniversary edition includes captions by leading Apollo 11 experts that explain the history and science behind the images, citing the mission log, publications of the day, and postflight astronaut interviews; while an evocative introduction by Colum McCann celebrates Mailer's incomparable skill at transforming "the science of space... the weight of history... the breadth of mythology" into prose.

When Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, limits on NASA funding and the lack of direction under the Nixon and Carter administrations had left the U.S. space program at a crossroads. In contrast to his predecessors, Reagan saw outer space as humanity's final frontier and as an opportunity for global leadership. His optimism and belief in American exceptionalism guided a decade of U.S. activities in space, including bringing the space shuttle into operation, dealing with the 1986 Challenger accident and its aftermath, committing to a permanently crewed space station, encouraging private sector space efforts, and fostering international space partnerships with both U.S. allies and with the Soviet Union. Drawing from a trove of declassified primary source materials and oral history interviews, John M. Logsdon provides the first comprehensive account of Reagan's civilian and commercial space policies during his eight years in the White House. Even as a fiscal conservative who was hesitant to increase NASA's budget, Reagan's enthusiasm for the space program made him perhaps the most pro-space president in American history.

In the years since the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Rover first began transmitting images from the surface of Mars, we have become familiar with the harsh, rocky, rusty-red Martian landscape. But those images are much less straightforward than they may seem to a layperson: each one is the result of a complicated set of decisions and processes involving the large team behind the Rovers. With Seeing Like a Rover, Janet Vertesi takes us behind the scenes to reveal the work that goes into creating our knowledge of Mars. Every photograph that the Rovers take, she shows, must be processed, manipulated, and interpreted - and all that comes after team members negotiate with each other about what they should even be taking photographs of in the first place. Vertesi's account of the inspiringly successful Rover project reveals science in action, a world where digital processing uncovers scientific truths, where images are used to craft consensus, and where team members develop an uncanny intimacy with the sensory apparatus of a robot that is millions of miles away. Ultimately, Vertesi shows, every image taken by the Mars Rovers is not merely a picture of Mars - it's a portrait of the whole Rover team, as well.

Featuring over seventy images from the heroic age of space exploration, Through Astronaut Eyes presents the story of how human daring along with technological ingenuity allowed people to see the Earth and stars as they never had before. Photographs from the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs tell powerful and compelling stories that continue to have cultural resonance to this day, not just for what they revealed about the spaceflight experience, but also as products of a larger visual rhetoric of exploration. The photographs tell us as much about space and the astronauts who took them as their reception within an American culture undergoing radical change throughout the turbulent 1960s. This book explores the origins and impact of astronaut still photography from 1962 to 1972, the period when human spaceflight first captured the imagination of people around the world. Photographs taken during those three historic programs are much admired and reprinted, but rarely seriously studied. This book suggests astronaut photography is particularly relevant to American culture based on how easily the images were shared through reproduction and circulation in a very visually oriented society. Space photography's impact at the crossroads of cultural studies, the history of exploration and technology, and public memory illuminates its continuing importance to American identity.

The investigation of minor solar system bodies, such as comets and asteroids, using spacecraft requires an understanding of orbital motion in strongly perturbed environments. The solutions to a wide range of complex and challenging problems in this field are reviewed in this comprehensive and authoritative work.

Fundamentals of Space Systems was developed to satisfy two objectives: the first is to provide a text suitable for use in an advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate course in both space systems engineering and space system design. The second is to be a primer and reference book for space professionals wishing to broaden their capabilities to develop, manage the development, or operate space systems. The authors of the individual chapters are practicing engineers that have had extensive experience in developing sophisticated experimental and operational spacecraft systems in addition to having experience teaching the subject material. The text presents the fundamentals of all the subsystems of a spacecraft missions and includes illustrative examples drawn from actual experience to enhance the learning experience. It includes a chapter on each of the relevant major disciplines and subsystems including space systems engineering, space environment, astrodynamics, propulsion and flight mechanics, attitude determination and control, power systems, thermal control, configuration management and structures, communications, command and telemetry, data processing, embedded flight software, survuvability and reliability, integration and test, mission operations, and the initial conceptual design of a typical small spacecraft mission.

Newton's laws of motion and his universal law of gravitation described mathematically the motion of two bodies undergoing mutual gravitational attraction. However, it is impossible to solve analytically the equation of motion for three gravitationally interacting bodies. This book discusses some techniques used to obtain numerical solutions of the equations of motion for planets and satellites, which are of fundamental importance to solar-system dynamicists and to those involved in planning the orbits of artificial satellites.

The first part introduces the classical two-body problem and solves it by rigorously developing the six integrals of the motion, starting from Newton's three laws of motion and his law of gravitation and then using vector algebra to develop the integrals. The various forms of the solution flow naturally from the integrals. In the second part, several modern perturbation techniques are developed and applied to cases of practical importance. For example, the perturbed two-body problem for an oblate planet or for a nonsymmetric rotating planet is considered, as is the effect of drag on a satellite. The two-body problem is regularized, and the nonlinear differential equation is thereby transformed to a linear one by further embedding several of the integrals. Finally, a brief sketch of numerical methods is given, as the perturbation equations must be solved by numerical rather than by analytical methods.

David Altman, James M. Carter, S. S. Penner, Martin Summerfield. High Temperature Equilibrium, Expansion Processes, Combustion of Liquid Propellants, The Liquid Propellants Rocket Engine. Originally published in 1960. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The objective of this textbook is to provide the mathematical models and algorithms needed to develop a thorough understanding of all control system functions of a rigid body spacecraft. Relatively simple, but practically applicable algorithms are presented rather than recent advances. We try to avoid detailed and specialized issues that are of less importance for the fundamental understanding, such as detailed environment models, etc. Furthermore, control problems that can be cast in standard formulations and solved with existing methods are not treated here. Instead, we intend to provide an understanding of the principles, put them in an engineering context, and try to give all explanations as concise as possible. Besides conventional three-axis attitude control systems, the following topics are treated in this book:* Control of agile rotation maneuvers using control moment gyros * Precise pointing control with error classes for pointing instruments * Control systems with accelerometers and free-flying test masses, which provide low-disturbance or disturbance-free environments We believe that these topics are of considerable relevance for the design of future spacecraft control systems, especially in the field of science and Earth observation missions.

The two most fascinating questions about extraterrestrial life are where it is found and what it is like. In particular, from our Earth-based vantage point, we are keen to know where the closest life to us is, and how similar it might be to life on our home planet. This book deals with both of these key issues. It considers possible homes for life, with a focus on Earth-like exoplanets. And it examines the possibility that life elsewhere might be similar to life here, due to the existence of parallel environments, which may result in Darwinian selection producing parallel trees of life between one planet and another. Understanding Life in the Universe provides an engaging and myth-busting overview for any reader interested in the existence and nature of extraterrestrial life, and the realistic possibility of discovering credible evidence for it in the near future.