Explores a critical period of space history when humans dared an expansive leap into the inner solar system. With an irreverent and engaging style, Jay Gallentine conveys the trials and triumphs of the people on the ground who conceived and engineered the missions that put robotic spacecraft on the heavenly bodies nearest our own.
Jay Gallentine is a historian and filmmaker who has spent more than ten years researching the history of unmanned spaceflight. He is the author of Ambassadors from Earth: Pioneering Explorations with Unmanned Spacecraft (Nebraska, 2009), winner of the 2009 Eugene M. Emme Award for Astronautical Literature. Bobak Ferdowsi is a systems engineer from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.