Exploring Space: From Galileo to the Mars Rover and Beyond by Martin Jenkins (review)

This attractive volume, with Stephen Biesty's signature detailed illustrations, may look like a coffee table/gift book, but it's got serious textual chops. Jenkins offers a smoothly narrated history of international space programs, where they've taken us so far, and what the limits are on where we can go from here. The eight chapters seem at first to be purely topical—e.g., "Looking at the Sky," Surviving in Space," "Is Anybody Out There?"—but Jenkins skillfully herds them into orderliness, seamlessly segueing among technical developments that enable astroscientists to reach each fresh level of exploration. The double-columned text provides more coverage than the modest page count implies, and the layout is clean, spacious, and inviting; Biesty's cutaway views of an astronaut's space suit, the International Space Station, and a Mars rover are everything nascent engineers drool over. This will be appreciated by readers who want the big picture on space travel—either as an intro to a new topic of interest or as a brushup on information previously acquired piecemeal and out of context. An index, timeline, glossary, and list of selected sources are included.