Dreams of other worlds: the amazing story of unmanned space exploration

527 Pages·2013·6.33 MB·English

by  Chris Impey

Dreams of Other Worlds
Dreams of Other Worlds
The Amazing Story of Unmanned Space Exploration
Chris Impey and Holly Henry
Princeton University Press
Princeton and Oxford
Copyright © 2013 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press,
41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,
6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW
press.princeton.edu
Jacket Illustrations: Planet with sunrise on the background of stars. © Molodec. Courtesy of
Shutterstock. Artist’s rendering of the planet Kepler-22b, located in the “habitable zone” of the
Kepler-22 star system. Courtesy of NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech.
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 978-0-691-14753-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013939381
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Sabon
and Helvetica Neue Printed on acid-free paper ∞
Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 Viking: Discovering the Red Planet 13
3 MER: The Little Rovers That Could 40
4 Voyager: Grand Tour of the Solar System 74
5 Cassini: Bright Rings and Icy Worlds 111
6 Stardust: Catching a Comet by the Tail 137
7 SOHO: Living with a Restless Star 161
8 Hipparcos: Mapping the Milky Way 186
9 Spitzer: Unveiling the Cool Cosmos 211
10 Chandra: Exploring the Violent Cosmos 242
11 HST: The Universe in Sharp Focus 270
12 WMAP: Mapping the Infant Universe 302
13 Conclusion: New Horizons, New Worlds 327
Notes 343
Selected Bibliography 405
Index 417
Dreams of Other Worlds
1
Introduction
SOMEONE WHO “MISSED” the late part of the twentieth century, perhaps by
being in a coma or a deep sleep, or by being marooned on a desert
island, would have many adjustments to make upon rejoining
civilization. The largest would probably be the galloping progress in
computers and telecommunications and information technology. But if
their attention turned to astronomy, they would also be amazed by what
had been learned in the interim. In the last third of the century, Mars
turned from a pale red disk as seen through a telescope to a planet with
ancient lake beds and subterranean glaciers. The outer Solar System
went from being frigid and uninteresting real estate to being a place
with as many as a dozen potentially habitable worlds. They would be
greeted by a cavalcade of exoplanets, projecting to billions across the
Milky Way galaxy. Their familiar view of the sky would now be
augmented by images spanning the entire electromagnetic spectrum,
revealing brown dwarfs and black holes and other exotic worlds. Finally,
they would encounter a cosmic horizon, or limit to their vision, that had
been pushed back to within an iota of the big bang, and they would be
faced with the prospect that the visible universe might be one among
many universes.
This book is a story of those discoveries, made by planetary probes
and space missions over the past forty years. The word “world” means
“age of man” in the old Germanic languages, and that proximate
perspective took centuries to expand into a universe filled with galaxies
and stars and their attendant planets. The missions at the heart of this
narrative have not only transformed our view of the physical universe,
they’ve also become embedded in culture and inspired the imagination—