posted 08-18-2017 03:59 AM               

This book describes the most complex machine ever sent to another planet: Curiosity. It is a one-ton robot with two brains, seventeen cameras, six wheels, nuclear power, and a laser beam on its head. No one human understands how all of its systems and instruments work.

This essential reference to the Curiosity mission explains the engineering behind every system on the rover, from its rocket-powered jetpack to its radioisotope thermoelectric generator to its fiendishly complex sample handling system. Its lavishly illustrated text explains how all the instruments work — its cameras, spectrometers, sample-cooking oven, and weather station — and describes the instruments' abilities and limitations. It tells you how the systems have functioned on Mars, and how scientists and engineers have worked around problems developed on a faraway planet: holey wheels and broken focus lasers. And it explains the grueling mission operations schedule that keeps the rover working day in and day out.

• Paperback: 390 pages
  
• Springer; February 9, 2018
  
• ISBN-10: 3319681443
  
• ISBN-13: 978-3319681443

posted 10-20-2023 02:57 PM               

At that time it was published, she mentioned that she was writing a second book "Curiosity and Its Science Mission: A Mars Rover Goes to Work." Has anyone heard when that book will be coming out?