The New Solar System

Fülszöveg

The New Solar System
Edited by:
J. Kelly Beatty Brian O'Leary Andrew Chaikin
What is The New Solar System — how is it different from the one we have pondered for aeons and struggled to comprehend since the invention of the telescope? The New Solar System is one seen close up, one probed by interplanetary spacecraft. These electromechanical marvels have sampled the atmospheres of the planets, tasted their soil, and swum through sheets of electrically charged particles.
The New Solar System is also full of unanticipated beauty, mystery and enigma, and the key to answering some of our most profound questions: How did the Sun and planets form, how did they evolve, what might be the ingredients for life both here and in other systems that almost certainly circle distant countless stars?
The bodies within The New Solar System — Sun, planets and their moons, asteroids, and comets — have now become available for exploration, not merely passive observation. We have flown around... Tovább

Fülszöveg

The New Solar System
Edited by:
J. Kelly Beatty Brian O'Leary Andrew Chaikin
What is The New Solar System — how is it different from the one we have pondered for aeons and struggled to comprehend since the invention of the telescope? The New Solar System is one seen close up, one probed by interplanetary spacecraft. These electromechanical marvels have sampled the atmospheres of the planets, tasted their soil, and swum through sheets of electrically charged particles.
The New Solar System is also full of unanticipated beauty, mystery and enigma, and the key to answering some of our most profound questions: How did the Sun and planets form, how did they evolve, what might be the ingredients for life both here and in other systems that almost certainly circle distant countless stars?
The bodies within The New Solar System — Sun, planets and their moons, asteroids, and comets — have now become available for exploration, not merely passive observation. We have flown around them, walked on them, dug in them; we have learned much. So much, in fact, that it is possible to say — for the first time in human history — that we understand, at least in outline if not sometimes in detail, how the solar system came to be and how its parts evolved.
All this wonderful knowledge and insight has been gathered in a remarkably short time. The swell began in the 1940's with the efforts of a handful of planetary scientists; it flowered during the era surrounding the "race" for the Moon between the United States and the Soviet Union. But, sadly, the first great era of space exploration has ended, culminating with the fantastically successful flybys of Jupiter and Saturn by the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft. To be sure, these and other still-operating probes will continue to send information as they move ever farther away from the Sun; but the new, revolutionary spacecraft to replace them are being prepared at but a trickle of the previous pace.
Summarized in this book are the fruits from the first decades of space exploration — the most bountiful era ever experienced in science. Join 21 of the pioneers who conceived the missions, designed the experiments, and analyzed the data. Their stories of discovery and insight will prevail for many years. Vissza