Space Invaders
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Reviews / Votes
From the reviews:
"Michel van Pelt in his book . provides a practical look at these amazing machines that travel ever further from our home base on Earth. . the reader can well appreciate the effort that goes into ensuring that robots can acquire the most useful information. van Pelt enhances this distillation by using a simple writing style with little specialized nomenclature. Thus, the book is well suited to youths, young adults and those with a general interest." (Universe Today, May, 2007)
"This includes an historical introduction, an overview of the major successful and unsuccessful missions, and an attempt to anticipate some of the new technologies that may be introduced in the future. All of this is well written and easy to follow, though much of it was fairly familiar. . this is a worthwhile read for anyone seeking a behind-the-scenes look at what goes on in those research centers and clean rooms where our robotic ambassadors are created and tested . ." (Peter Bond, BBC SkyatNight, June, 2007)
"In Space Invaders, Michel van Pelt, a cost and systems engineer with ESA, walks the reader through the steps needed to design, develop, and launch a planetary mission. . The book is written for people who are not necessary familiar with space exploration, so there's some basic explanatory material in the book about orbits and rocket design. However, van Pelt provides plenty of more detailed information as well." (Jeff Foust, The Space Review, June, 2007)
"Van Pelt discusses unmanned space missions, which he calls robotic missions carried out by robotic spacecraft. . it will be useful to the general reader interested in learning about unmanned space exploration missions (US, European, and Russian) in all their complexity, in a chatty, somewhat amusing manner. It will also be useful to undergraduates who need an introduction to 'robotic' space exploration. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers; lower-andupper-division undergraduates; two-year technical program students." (A. M. Strauss, CHOICE, Vol. 44 (10), June, 2007)
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THE opportunities for new scientific discoveries in the Solar System remain boundless. We will continue to send out new, more efficient robotic explorers incorporating exciting new technology with ever-increasing capabilities. We will use them to visit new worlds as well as revisit places weve already had a glimpse of, to see them in new ways and learn much more .
We are going to build spacecraft that can do more science for the same sizes, masses and power levels ofour current spacecraft. In parallel, we will develop robots that can do the same amount of exploration with much smaller systems than we are using now. Our mechanical adventurers will investigate regions on planets and moons that were inaccessible for earlier spacecraft, and they will be more adaptive to changing situations. Some new developments are the result ofa "requirement pull"; they are undertaken to reach a certain specified goal.
The technology ofthe Apollo Moon program is a clear example of this: to fulfill president Kennedys proclamation "oflanding a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth," NASA and US industries had to invent new moonsuits, lunar landers, rocket motors, smaller onboard computers and much more. A current requirement pull is the ongoing development of new launcher technology in a quest to make access to space cheaper. However, more often new space projects are a result of a "technology push"; new inventions making it possible to do robotic space missions faster, better or cheaper.
The fast progress in miniaturization and increased sensitivityofall kinds of electronic detectors has for instance resulted in new scientific instruments that are much better and yet smaller than those launched 10 years ago. And these were in turn already a big improvement over the instruments flown on board spacecraft in the 1980s. Modern instruments can make more detailed observations than earlier versions, but we need more stable satellites to fully benefit from the improved capabilities.
This means the AOCS (Altitude and Orbit Control System) equipment needs to be more accurate. Furthermore, because of the increased amount of detail that the instruments are able to see, they collect larger amounts of data. In turn, this requires improvements in the Data Handling subsystem. Due to this kind ofprocesses, interplanetary spacecraft on the whole are improved continually; each new mission is a step forward in science as well as in technology."
