NASA’S Discovery Program: The First Twenty Years of Competitive Planetary Exploration

** Softcover - 444 Pages - Printed in Full Color **NASA’S Discovery ProgramThe First Twenty Years of Competitive Planetary Exploration"The Discovery Program is the most important NASA robotic planetary spacecraft program you have never heard of—unless you are a space agency insider."Initiated in 1989 and legislated into existence in 1993, Discovery has funded a series of relatively small, focused, and innovative missions to the planets and small bodies of the solar system.Notable ones include:Mars Pathfinder, which landed a miniature rover on Mars in 1997NEAR Shoemaker, which orbited and landed on 433 Eros in 20002001Deep Impact, which hit Comet Tempel 1 in 2005MESSENGER, which orbited Mercury between 2011 and 2015, andKepler space telescope, which discovered thousands of exoplanets. If the public has heard of anything, it is the missions, not the program from which they sprang.Started in the early 1990s, NASA’s Discovery Program represented a breakthrough in the way NASA explores space. Providing opportunities for low-cost planetary science missions, the Discovery Program has funded a series of relatively small, focused, and innovative missions to investigate the planets and small bodies of our solar system.For over 30 years, Discovery has given scientists a chance to dig deep into their imaginations and find inventive ways to unlock the mysteries of our solar system and beyond. As a complement to NASA’s larger “flagship” planetary science explorations, Discovery’s continuing goal is to achieve outstanding results by launching more, smaller missions using fewer resources and shorter development times.This book draws on interviews with program managers, engineers, and scientists from Discovery’s early missions. It takes an in-depth look at the management techniques they used to design creative and cost-effective spacecraft that continue to yield ground-breaking scientific data, drive new technology innovations, and achieve what has never been done before.We’ve Turned the Old Way of Doing Business Upside DownNEAR, the first Discovery mission, launched on 17 February 1996. Mars Pathfinder, the second Discovery mission, was launched on a clear night exactly as planned, at 1:58 a.m., 4 December 1996. The Pathfinder rover was named by 12-year-old Valerie Ambroise as part of a national grade-school essay contest. She suggested that it be called Sojourner, after Sojourner Truth, who made it her mission to “travel up and down the land.”In the end, the Applied Physics Laboratory delivered NEAR for one-third of the cost of the previously least-expensive mission in the history of planetary exploration. Mars Pathfinder, meanwhile, placed a lander on the surface of Mars for a small fraction of the cost of the last time NASA so landed, in 1976—and included a rover, another first for Mars. The mission schedules were equally aggressive: each took less than three years from the start of development to launch. The Discovery Program was on track to launch, on average, one mission every 18 months or so, a much higher flight rate than planetary exploration had ever before achieved.144The next Discovery mission was going to the Moon.You'll enjoy reading about the wins, and losses, of the NASA Discovery program and will come away with a much deeper appreciation for the challenges and success they accomplished as depicted in this text!Click that Add to Cart Button NOW! Read more