Customer Reviews

Jupiter Odyssey: The Story of NASA's Galileo Mission (Springer Praxis Books / Space Exploration)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In the author's preface to his latest book, JUPITER ODYSSEY: THE STORY OF NASA'S GALILEO MISSION, renowned science writer David M. Harland notes that while the NASA History Office will publish the "official" history of the Galileo Project in 2003, he is only providing an account of the spacecraft's journey and its scientific discoveries. After reading the book, though, one might well conclude that Harland is being too modest and that he has accomplished much more. Like his previous book, EXPLORING THE MOON: THE APOLLO EXPEDITIONS, Harland does not merely chronicle a highly successful scientific endeavor, he also adds his considerable knowledge of planetary science to the task of interweaving an interesting narrative with a highly readable interpretation of the science results; in this case, from Galileo's exploration of the jovian system, as well as from the many targets of opportunity en route to Jupiter. From the inception of the Galileo Project in the mid-1970's, through its repeated launch delays (culminating in a launch in 1989), through the end of its primary and extended missions at the turn of the century, Harland literally traces the circuitous, politically volatile, and often star-crossed journey of this highly successful robotic explorer. Unlike his colleagues in this genre (e.g. Henry S.F. Cooper, Eric Burgess, Jeffrey Kluger, etc.) Harland provides more than just a serial history. In addition to first-person accounts from many of the key scientists and engineers on the mission, he draws on a plethora of primary sources that include formally published, peer-reviewed science papers and conference proceedings to give the reader a very thorough lesson on the Galileo Mission. The book is abundantly footnoted and richly illustrated with hundreds of images, many of which have been composited and mosaicked by the author from original datasets. A minor drawback is that the illustrations are all black and white, but Harland does provide full references so that one may access the original data in the Galileo archives, which are fully accessible via the Internet. I highly recommend JUPITER ODYSSEY to all readers, beginner to advanced, all of who will surely gain new insight into one of the most successful interplanetary missions ever flown.

At last ... someone's written the full story of this amazing mission. The story of Galileo - a true space odyssey for 2001 - is long and complex, involving much trial and tribulation. Harland has decided to concentrate on the discoveries rather than the drama - the failed antenna, launch delays and uncooperative tape recorder - although he does cover these topics well and with authority. This book comes into its own with the description of the often mind-boggling discoveries made at Jupiter, and the lesser-trumpeted but equally-impressive observations made at Venus, the Asteroid Belt and of the Earth-Moon system. I particularly liked the account of the kamikaze Jupiter Atmospheric Probe - the little package of instruments despatched into the atmosphere of the giant planet itself and which, despite all the telecoms foul-ups, still managed to send back reams of priceless information to earth from the interior of a gas giant! And all this, with 1980s technology. Thee is full coverage of the discoveries made at Europa and Io, the ''sexiest'' part of the mission. The account of the geology of Io is particularly good, and the chapter dealing with Europa is as up-to-date as could be hoped for. Harland does not ignore Callisto and Ganymede either - these moons have not had the coverage of their more glamorous siblings - yet under their icy crusts there may lurk, as Harland says, dark oceans. Jupiter itself gets a good show here, with an in-depth account of the bizarre meteorological processes operating on this photogenic planet. Some of the more ''obscure'' stuff is covered in detail too. Tis is Harland's forte - covering the nitty-gritty of a space mission, the often arcane details that other accounts leave out. Thus we learn all about Jupiter's complex magnetic field, the tiny moonlets some of which are smaller than cities, and some fascinating stuff about interplanetary dust. This is a good read, quite technical at times but there is a substantial glossary at the back for those of us who have difficulty distinguishing out faculae from our calderas. Buy this book if you are interested in space. Brilliant.

I bought this book because I have made generally good experiences with books in this series, however, I was deeply disappointed by it. David Harland tries to cover the whole of the Galileo mission, but overall, I consider the book a failure. If you want to read a 500p+ NASA press release, this book might be for you. If you want a summary of the Galileo mission, without many repetitions, with factual scientific information on a popular level, however, this book is not for you. Many things, for example the cause for the Galileo launch delay and many important scientific results, are never really spelt out, the illustrations (all in black and white, by the way, despite what the cover might imply) are all the same JPEGs that you can get cheaper from NASAs web-site, and without the strong JPEG aliases that suggest that somebody tried to compress them even more, and I just could continue with that. This is unfortunate, however, since seldomly an author has attempted to cover the results of a space mission as important as Galileo, in such a detail. Because such an attempt is laudable, I give the book 2 stars instead of one.

This book takes you on a ride with the famous robot spacecraft Galileo. Although the first couple chapters describe the spacecraft and deal briefly with the administrative headaches and unfortunate events that led to the greatly delayed launch, the bulk of the book literally follows the robot around as it makes its 6-year interplanetary journey and subsequent groundbreaking observations of remote Jupiter and the Galilean moons.

Despite communications being severely hindered by the early loss of the high-gain antenna, Galileo was still able to send back lots of high-resolution pictures of the Jovian system as well as tons of readings from other instruments. Many of these pictures are printed in this book. The previous reviewer was correct in stating that the pictures on the Internet look better due to more dramatic image scale, but this is a paperback book and the pictures had to be shrunk to fit in. Nevertheless, many of the photographs are stunning, especially of Europa and Io, the two moons closest to Jupiter.

The story really sheds light on how much was lost due to the failure of the main antenna, because instead of a few high-resolution shots of selected areas of the surface like we got, all four moons would have been covered in glorious detail. Anyway, it's still remarkable what the programming team was able to achieve with data compression.

Also, the accounting of the numerous radiation-induced glitches and resets suffered by Galileo helps us understand how incredibly hostile Jovian space is. If a well-shielded electronic device encounters so many problems with radiation out there, how much worse would it be for living creatures??

Overall, a fantastic telling of an incredible story, somewhat accessible to the layman but especially so to the amateur astronomer or space science enthusiast.