JPL Historian Erik Conway talks about Mars Missions at Flintridge Bookstore & Coffeehouse
FLINTRIDGE BOOKSTORE & COFFEEHOUSE
1010 Foothill Boulevard La Cañada Flintridge, CA 91011 (818) 790-0717
PRESS RELEASE: March 23, 2015 CONTACT: Gail Mishkin, (818) 790-0717, gailm@flintridgebooks.com
ERIK M. CONWAY, JPL Historian
“Exploration and Engineering: The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Quest for Mars”
Book Signing: Thursday, March 26, 7 PM
La Cañada Flintridge, CA – On Thursday, March 26, at 7 PM, Flintridge Bookstore & Coffeehouse hosts a talk and booksigning for Erik M. Conway, historian of science and technology at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology, and author of Exploration and Engineering: The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Quest for Mars.
Although the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has become synonymous with the United States’ planetary exploration during the past half century, its most recent focus has been on Mars. Beginning in the 1990s and continuing through the Mars Phoenix mission of 2007, JPL led the way in engineering an impressive, rapidly evolving succession of Mars orbiters and landers, including roving robotic vehicles whose successful deployment onto the Martian surface posed some of the most complicated technical problems in space flight history.
In Exploration and Engineering, Conway reveals how JPL engineers’ creative technological feats led to major Mars exploration breakthroughs. He takes readers into the heart of the lab’s problem-solving approach and management structure, where talented scientists grappled with technical challenges while also coping, not always successfully, with funding shortfalls, unrealistic schedules, and managerial turmoil.
Conway offers an insider’s perspective into the changing goals of Mars exploration, the ways in which sophisticated computer simulations drove the design process, and the remarkable evolution of landing technologies over a thirty-year period.
“No subject in the history of planetary science has been more publicly enticing than the efforts to understand Mars. In Exploration and Engineering, historian Erik M. Conway presents a very detailed, mission-by-mission discussion of Mars exploration since Viking. This capably told narrative captures the fascinating details of the Mars program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.” — Roger D. Launius, National Air and Space Museum, editor of Exploring the Solar System: The History and Science of Planetary Exploration
Conway is also the author of Atmospheric Science at NASA: A History.
For more information, contact Gail Mishkin at (818) 790-0717. Flintridge Bookstore and Coffeehouse is located at 1010 Foothill Blvd., La Cañada Flintridge, CA 91011, at the intersection of Foothill Blvd. and the Angeles Crest Hwy. Take the Angeles Crest exit off the 210, turn south, make a right onto Foothill Blvd., and turn left onto Chevy Chase. Parking is in the rear of the store.
