Deep Space Probes (Second Edition)

Gregory Matloff

The Space Age is nearly 50 years old but exploration of the outer planets and beyond has only just begun.

This second edition of Deep-Space Probes draws on the latest research to explain why we should explore beyond the edge of the Solar System. Fully updated and revised, the book describes the highly sophisticated robot spacecraft needed to carry out the first explorations in deep space, and the technical poblems that are still to be solved. It also looks at the possibility of human travel into interstellar space, and some of the immense problems that such journeys would entail.

Finally, the book poses the fascinating question to which, as yet, there is no answer: if we think we can achieve deep-space travel, why not others? Could deep space probes be with us already ­ here and now?

Table of contents:

• Foreword
• Author's preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of illustrations
• Introduction
  
  
  1. Motivations for deep-space travel
  2. The realms of space
  3. Tomorrow's targets
  4. Pace propulsion today
  5. The incredible shrinking spaceprobe
  6. The nuclear option
  7. Twenty-first century starflight
  8. On the technological horizon
  9. Exotic possibilities
  10. Of stars, planets and life
  11. Life between the stars
  12. Conscious spacecraft
  13. Meeting ET
  
  
  
• Bibliography
• Afterword
• Nomenclature
• Glossary
• Index

Extent: 280 page
Binding: hardback
Publication Date: April 2005
ISBN: 978-3-540-24772-2

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