Martian summer
Subtitle: robot arms, cowboy spacemen, and my 90 days with the Phoenix Mars Mission
By: Andrew Kessler
Edition: 1st Pegasus books cloth ed.
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2011
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 341
ISBN-13: 9781605981765
Subjects: Exploration; Phoenix Mars Mission (U.S.); Exploration of Mars (Planet); Space flight to Mars
Description: The author chronicles the three months he spent in Mission Control for NASA's Phoenix Mars Mission, a project that lead to the discovery of liquid water on Mars, as well as a giant frozen ocean trapped beneath the planet's north pole.

"Author's note. This is a book about Mars and the humans that make rocket science possible. This is not the most accurate account of this NASA mission. For that, you'll want to review the science papers or other Mars-related literature. Instead, this is an account of winning the nerd lottery: The luckiest fanboy in fandom gets a shot to spend three months with unfettered access to Mission Control. It's just your average summer trying to capture the story of 130 of the world's best planetary scientists and engineers exploring the north pole of Mars. It's a warts-and-all look at the Phoenix Mars mission from a regular guy who loves space."--Page ix.
Notes: Includes index.
Table of contents: title: pt. I. The Phoenix of Tucson. First-day jitters; title: The clod; title: Control room; title: Cloddy with a chance of sprinkles; title: Red haze; title: Special Mars pill; title: Wonderland; title: The lost day; title: Missing pieces; title: pt. II. Red Planet blues. I, for one, welcome our NASA overlords; title: Arm up, stand down; title: ALl the landers, independent; title: Down and out in the SOC; title: In a scrape; title: Powers of ten; title: Nilton's nodules; title: An enemy among us; title: Nilton's nodules (round II); title: Feel my rasp; title: Martian colds; title: There is no try; title: Don't be a rasp hole; title: Ice delivery, take two; title: Mars man forever; title: The third time; title: Press conference; title: pt. III. It's dry freeze. Tinfoil hats; title: Oy covault; title: Full release; title: Shove the regolith back in the lander; title: That's the planet I saw on TV; title: Forty minutes back; title: Scooped; title: Two days forward, one sol back; title: Paralyzed ops; title: The dude abides; title: Stiff joints; title: Salty liquid water tears; title: Sol searching.