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Nasa's Discovery Program: The First Twenty Years of Competitive Planetary Exploration
Published by
National Aeronautics and Space Administration Office of Communications NASA History Division, 2025
ISBN 10: 1626830762
ISBN 13: 9781626830769
Used
Softcover
Seller: World of Books (was SecondSale), Montgomery, IL, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Condition: Very Good. The Discovery Program is the most important NASA robotic planetary spacecraft program most laypeople have never heard of. Started in the early 1990s, this program 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, NEAR (Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous) Shoemaker, Deep Impact, MESSENGER, and the Kepler space telescope. At the end of the 1980s, there was growing discomfort in the science community with NASA's planetary exploration program. Almost the whole planetary budget went to a handful of large, expensive missions, which had been significantly delayed by the national policy of using only the Space Shuttle as a launch vehicle. An attempt to create a lower-cost Planetary Observer spacecraft series produced only one mission, Mars Observer, which significantly overran its budget, in part because it had to be redesigned for an expendable booster after the Challenger shuttle accident of January 1986. Opportunities for small, relatively simple missions were absent.A new attempt to create a low-cost planetary program came primarily from two would-be reformers: Stamatios "Tom" Krimigis, a space physicist heliophysics at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), and Wesley T. Huntress, head of NASA's Solar System Exploration Division and then Associate Administrator for Space Science. By the end of the 1990s, the program's approach to cutting-edge, low-cost missions jibed well with then-NASA Administrator Dan Goldin's push for a "faster, better, cheaper" approach to spacecraft development.Researched and written initially by the late Susan Niebur, the former Discovery program scientist, this book takes an in-depth look at the innovative management techniques that program engineers and scientists used to stimulate creative spacecraft designs that yielded useful scientific data about our solar system. David Brown polished the raw manuscript, which was largely based on insightful oral histories that Niebur had conducted with other program personnel, making it accessible to lay readers. Seller Inventory # 00106941869
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NASA's Discovery Program: The First Twenty Years of Competitive Planetary Exploration
Published by
National Aeronautics and Space A, 2023
ISBN 10: 1626830762
ISBN 13: 9781626830769
Used
paperback
Seller: HPB-Movies, Dallas, TX, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
paperback. Condition: Very Good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority! Seller Inventory # S_479100331
Stock Image
NASA's Discovery Program: The First Twenty Years of Competitive Planetary Exploration
Published by
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2023
ISBN 10: 1626830762
ISBN 13: 9781626830769
Used
paperback
Seller: Lexington Books Inc, Idaho Falls, ID, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
paperback. Condition: Very Good. Contents are tight and clean. Seller Inventory # 169000