Seeing Like A Rover

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.

"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."

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.

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.

Steve Squyres is the face and voice of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission. Squyres dreamed up the mission in 1987, saw it through from conception in 1995 to a successful landing in 2004, and serves as the principal scientist of its $400 million payload. He has gained a rare inside look at what it took for rovers Spirit and Opportunity to land on the red planet in January 2004--and knows firsthand their findings.

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.

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.

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!