Download or read book Seeing Like a Rover written by Janet Vertesi and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-04-22 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the years since the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit and Opportunity first began transmitting images from the surface of Mars, we have become familiar with the harsh, rocky, rusty-red Martian landscape. But those images are much less straightforward than they may seem to a layperson: each one is the result of a complicated set of decisions and processes involving the large team behind the Rovers. With Seeing Like a Rover, Janet Vertesi takes us behind the scenes to reveal the work that goes into creating our knowledge of Mars. Every photograph that the Rovers take, she shows, must be processed, manipulated, and interpreted—and all that comes after team members negotiate with each other about what they should even be taking photographs of in the first place. Vertesi’s account of the inspiringly successful Rover project reveals science in action, a world where digital processing uncovers scientific truths, where images are used to craft consensus, and where team members develop an uncanny intimacy with the sensory apparatus of a robot that is millions of miles away. Ultimately, Vertesi shows, every image taken by the Mars Rovers is not merely a picture of Mars—it’s a portrait of the whole Rover team, as well.
Download or read book Seeing Like a Rover written by Janet Vertesi and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-04-22 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Seeing Like a Rover" brings the Mars Exploration Rover mission to vivid life through the author s years of immersion with the team during routine operations on Mars. In the book, Janet Vertesi explores the social and technical achievements of making knowledge about Mars based on iterative digital representations of its surface. We see how scientists on the Rover mission both perform the digital transformations that bring new features in their images to light, enabling discovery, as well as how they collectively interpret images to determine where the Rovers are located on Mars and what they should do next. Using her close study of digital imaging, which exhibits a sensitivity to the social context of scientific work, Vertesi discusses how representation on the mission is never about finding a single way of truthfully representing Mars. Representation is instead, she argues, a question of using image processing techniques strategically to reveal and conceal different features of the planet s surface, and of bringing these multiple representations together to make both knowledge and collective decisions about exploration on the Red Planet. "Seeing Like a Rover" speaks to many themes that are familiar to historians, sociologists, and philosophers of science. Issues such as trust among knowledge-making teams, the different epistemic status and practices of the lab and the field, and the heritage of visual languages in an emerging discipline are just as relevant in other periods and places. Moreover, by revealing how representational practices craft social visions, Vertesi develops a framework that can be applied to scientific imaging across a variety of time periods and scientific contexts."
Download or read book The Design and Engineering of Curiosity written by Emily Lakdawalla and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-03-27 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Rover Throws a Party written by Kristin L. Gray and published by Knopf Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by NASA's Curiosity rover, this is the story of a lonely Mars rover who plans the best birthday party in the solar system. It's Rover's anniversary on Mars! Time to celebrate by throwing the best party this planet has ever seen. Rover hands out invitations all over town, but it seems like he's the only one around. Will anyone come to the party, or will Rover be all alone on his big day? In 2013, NASA programmed their Curiosity rover to hum "Happy Birthday to You" in honor of its first year on Mars. Inspired by this anecdote, this is the tale of a lonely rover and his party, accompanied by fascinating Mars rover facts that help explain the real science behind the story. This fun birthday tale provides an accessible, kid-friendly look at one of NASA's coolest programs.
Download or read book Red Rover written by Roger Wiens and published by Basic Books (AZ). This book was released on 2013-03-12 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covers the development and construction of the Mars rover Curiosity, the most sophisticated vehicle ever sent to the "Red Planet."
Download or read book Shaping Science written by Janet Vertesi and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-11-06 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Shaping Science, Janet Vertesi draws on a decade of immersive ethnography with NASA’s robotic spacecraft teams to create a comparative account of two great space missions of the early 2000s. Although these missions featured robotic explorers on the frontiers of the solar system bravely investigating new worlds, their commands were issued from millions of miles away by a very human team. By examining the two teams’ formal structures, decision-making techniques, and informal work practices in the day-to-day process of mission planning, Vertesi shows just how deeply entangled a team’s local organizational context is with the knowledge they produce about other worlds. Using extensive, embedded experiences on two NASA spacecraft teams, this is the first book to apply organizational studies of work to the laboratory environment in order to analyze the production of scientific knowledge itself. Engaging and deeply researched, Shaping Science demonstrates the significant influence that the social organization of a scientific team can have on the practices of that team and the results they yield.
Download or read book A Curious Robot on Mars written by James Duffett-Smith and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 15 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Far off into space—186 million miles to be precise—a fearless robot rover travels all by his lonesome. He is on a crucial mission from Earth, eagerly seeking to answer the much-anticipated question: Does life exist on Mars? But there is nothing to be seen on this planet except miles of rocks. He loses support from mission control and finds himself alone and cut off from civilization. But the curious little robot is resilient! After noticing a flash of light shining brilliantly through the crack of a rock, he instantly realizes his mission is far from over. He slowly inches towards the edge, but then suddenly falls perilously into the darkness! What will he discover? Bethany Straker's vibrant illustrations accompany James Duffett-Smith's suspenseful tale of discovery and hope. A Curious Robot on Mars! will motivate any and all readers to strive for one's ambitions—and most importantly, to always be curious!
Download or read book Curiosity The Story of a Mars Rover written by Markus Motum and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2023-10-24 with total page 57 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his debut picture book, Motum brings the story of NASA's beloved Mars rover Curiosity to life in vivid color. Full of eye-catching retro illustrations, this book is sure to fascinate budding space explorers and set inquisitive minds soaring. Full color.
Download or read book Mars 3 D written by Jim Bell and published by Sterling Publishing Company. This book was released on 2008 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents the harsh landscape of the Red Planet through 3-D and color images from the robotic explorers Spirit and Opportunity; provides a close-up look a the Martian rocks, craters, valleys, and other geologic configurations.
Download or read book Peace Like a River written by Leif Enger and published by Atlantic Monthly Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Davy kills two men and leaves home. His father packs up the family in a search for Davy.
Download or read book Mars Rover Curiosity written by Rob Manning and published by Smithsonian Institution. This book was released on 2014-10-21 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The firsthand account of the trials and tribulations of engineering one of the most complex pieces of space technology, the Mars Rover Curiosity, by its chief engineer Rob Manning In the course of our enduring quest for knowledge about ourselves and our universe, we haven't found answers to one of our most fundamental questions: Does life exist anywhere else in the universe? Ten years and billions of dollars in the making, the Mars Rover Curiosity is poised to answer this all-important question. In Mars Rover Curiosity: An Inside Account from Curiosity's Chief Engineer, Rob Manning, the project's chief engineer, tells of bringing the groundbreaking spacecraft to life. Manning and his team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, tasked with designing a lander many times larger and more complex than any before, faced technical setbacks, fights over inadequate resources, and the challenges of leading an army of brilliant, passionate, and often frustrated experts. Manning's fascinating personal account--which includes information from his exclusive interviews with leading Curiosity scientists--is packed with tales of revolutionary feats of science, technology, and engineering. Readers experience firsthand the disappointment at encountering persistent technical problems, the agony of near defeat, the sense of victory at finding innovative solutions to these problems, the sheer terror of staking careers and reputations on a lander that couldn't be tested on Earth, and the rush of triumph at its successful touchdown on Mars on August 5, 2012. This is the story of persistence, dedication, and unrelenting curiosity.
Download or read book Working on Mars written by William J. Clancey and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning in 2004, a team of geologists and other planetary scientists did field science in a dark room in Pasadena, exploring Mars from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) by means of the remotely operated Mars Exploration Rovers (MER). Clustered around monitors, living on Mars time, painstakingly plotting each movement of the rovers and their tools, sensors, and cameras, these scientists reported that they felt as if they were on Mars themselves, doing field science. The MER created a virtual experience of being on Mars. This book examines how the MER has changed the nature of planetary field science. NASA cast the rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, as "robotic geologists," and ascribed machine initiative to remotely controlled actions. Clancey argues that the actual explorers were not the rovers but the scientists, who imaginatively projected themselves into the body of the machine to conduct the first overland expedition of another planet. The author investigates how the design of the rover mission enables field science on Mars, explaining how the scientists and rover engineers manipulate the vehicle and why the programmable tools and analytic instruments work so well for them.
Download or read book Mars Exploration Rovers written by Steve Kortenkamp and published by Capstone. This book was released on 2016-08 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Explores various perspectives on exploration of Mars by rovers. The reader's choices reveal the historical details"--
Download or read book The Right Kind of Crazy written by Adam Steltzner and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adam Steltzner is no ordinary engineer. His path to leadership was about as unlikely as they come. A child of beatnik parents, he barely made it through school. He blew off college in favour of work at a health food store and playing bass in a band, but after discovering an astonishing gift for maths and physics, he ended up helping a group of scientists land the heaviest rover in the history of space exploration on Mars. This is the story of the teamwork, drama and extraordinary feats of innovation at the Jet Propulsion Lab that culminated in that landing in 2012.
Download or read book Curiosity s Mission on Mars written by Ron Miller and published by Twenty-First Century Books. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Could life have previously flourished on Mars? Will humans be able to travel there one day? Can humans one day colonize the red planet? NASA scientists have been interested in answering questions like these for a long time. In November 2011, NASA sent the rover Curiosity to Earth's nearest planetary neighbor. By gathering information about Mars's climate and geology, the robot is helping scientists uncover the secrets of the planet and its past. Since its launch, Curiosity has made some amazing discoveries. The rover found an ancient streambed where water once flowed for thousands of years, and rock samples proved that the surface soil on Mars still has water! In addition, from drilling into Martian rock, the rover detected the key chemicals necessary for life?sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and carbon. And Curiosity's measurement of radiation on Mars shows levels similar to that at the International Space Station. These discoveries suggest that some parts of Mars could have been habitable?and may be again in the future. Learn more about the red planet and see what else Curiosity has uncovered!
Download or read book A Rover s Story written by Jasmine Warga and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestseller * Best Book of the Year from The Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library The One and Only Ivan meets The Wild Robot in this unique and deeply moving middle grade novel about the journey of a fictional Mars rover, from the Newbery Honor–winning author of Other Words for Home. Meet Resilience, a Mars rover determined to live up to his name. Res was built to explore Mars. He was not built to have human emotions. But as he learns new things from the NASA scientists who assemble him, he begins to develop humanlike feelings. Maybe there’s a problem with his programming…. Human emotions or not, launch day comes, and Res blasts off to Mars, accompanied by a friendly drone helicopter named Fly. But Res quickly discovers that Mars is a dangerous place filled with dust storms and giant cliffs. As he navigates Mars’s difficult landscape, Res is tested in ways that go beyond space exploration. As millions of people back on Earth follow his progress, will Res have the determination, courage, and resilience to succeed… and survive?
Download or read book They Came On Viking Ships written by Jackie French and published by HarperCollins Australia. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can enemy warriors become your friends? A story of adventure in a new land When Vikings raid and destroy a small coastal village, Hekja and her dog, Snarf, are captured and taken to Greenland. In this harsh and cold land, Hekja becomes a thrall - a slave - to Freydis Eriksdottir, daughter of the infamous Erik the Red. Hekja's fiery determination earns her the respect of her mistress. But Hekja's journey was just the beginning, as she and Snarf and other colonists join their leader, Freydis, on a voyage to Vinland to establish a new settlement where more perilous adventures await them... AWARDS Shortlisted - Young People's History Prize, NSW Premier's History Awards (2006)
