Space Probes: 50 Years of Exploration from Luna 1 to New Horizons

I know our society values sports athletes and movie stars, but it is the great minds that produce these kinds of machines and the astounding things they accomplish that should be heralded as supreme beings. This book lavishly points out these achievements with informative prose and beautiful photographs, mostly in color. The book is the size of a thick history or college science book. Everything, including the cover, says quality. Very nice and informative book. It will be one of my favorites in my science and astronomy bookshelf. I'm glad I purchased this one, and you will too. It has information about all previous robotic missions, including New Horizons, which is on it's way to Pluto right now (January 2014) and even talks about future missions. If you like these missions, you will love this book.

In the old Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man", the assistant runs to warn her soon-to-be-on-the-menu boss "It's a cookbook!" Unfortunately, that's my reaction to this beautiful but sparsely detailed new book on space probes: "It's a coffee table book!"The cover makes you salivate for Jane's Space Directory-type descriptions, tables and charts with mission objectives, velocities, distances, encounter dates etc in ten-point pica, but alas, it's not what you get on the inside. Each mission is given a perfunctory 2-6 pages with minimal narrative and full page color illustrations and photos, but only the most basic diagrams of the probes or landers themselves. Technical detail is almost entirely omitted. Interspersed are for-beginners-only one page tributes to Galileo, Magellan, Lowell, Goddard, Carl Sagan, etc with a paragraph or two on who they were. Logically organized and beautifully illustrated and rendered, the book is only a basic -- if comprehensive -- overview of what I regard as the single greatest human accomplishment of my lifetime: the 50 year exploration of every major planet and moon in our solar system.If you're looking for rich technical detail on the probes themselves or the worlds they've visited, you need to look elsewhere.

A very good book with lots of information on curent and past spacecraft on an international level. Many spacecraft I learned about for the first time from this book. If you want to explore the universe, start with this book and how we learn about space, one spacecraft at a time.

Book is easy to read and has every probe that you want to know about. period. Very good coverage of Russian probes and European space agency.

I don't really regret purchasing this book. Technically it's a bit "light". Might be good for those in high school or others seeking a general overview of robotic spacecraft.The book is written with the metric system (with few conversions to customary units).Personally, I'm becoming bored with robots. I look forward to the manned conquest of space.

Good on subject.Always interested in space exploration

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Excellent resource !

I found this to be great and very informative book. It covers probe missions from the 1950s up till the late 2000s. Useful for anyone who wants know the history of unmanned space flight.

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Received it in excellent condition.I am presently stoking up for my retirement so I only leaf through it and look very good.

Great book, plenty of informations for space buffs.

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