Lost in Space

With a Book to Guide You

I’ve just spent a couple of weeks lost in space in my spare time. How did I accomplish this?  By reading a fascinating book called New Frontiers of Space: From Mars to the Edge of the Universe, from Time Books, written and edited by Jeffrey Kluger and Michael D. Lemonick, joined by several other authors, all writing about space.

I’ve written before on my blog about how a book in the Time series turned me on to space and astronomy as a kid. I was paging through a book about space exploration and happened to see an image of Saturn with its rings. That was the most alien-looking thing I’d ever seen, and I remember sitting there for a long time looking at the picture and thinking about the weirdness and coolness of it all. It’s safe to say that this early book was one of the factors that set me on my career path of learning and sharing astronomy with others. Now, as an adult I’ve written or edited a number of books, articles, documentaries, and exhibits on space and astronomy, and I find there’s always a firehose of information out there to be shared!

New Frontiers of Space reminded me so much of that book from my childhood that several times as I was reading it, I’d stare off into space thinking about how much exploration we’ve done since I was a little girl. Those rings of Saturn? I covered the Voyager 2 mission to Saturn as my first science writing gig. Today, I follow the Cassini Mission as it continues its study of the Saturn system. What struck me right off the bat was the first color plate in the book: a picture of Saturn from Cassini! I love it!  Saturn was, in fact, one of the first successful science observations made by Hubble Space Telescope after the discovery of spherical aberration, and that observation led to my first book about Hubble called Hubble Vision.  I found the science and images so compelling, just as I did as a kid.

New Frontiers really covers a lot of space exploration and astronomy. It takes the reader to look at the latest in telescope technology and explains how our advanced “seeing” machines operate here on the ground and in space to give us ever-sharper eyes on the universe. With those eyes, the authors explain, we are now starting to be able to answer questions about such fascinating topics as galaxy formation, the mysterious black holes, star and planet birth, and the origin and evolution of the universe.  But, it’s not just limited to techno-discussions and pretty pictures. There’s a lot of good discussion about space exploration policy even as the authors present the latest and greatest at places like Pluto (which will be visited in just a few years by the New Horizons spacecraft.  One of my favorite chapters is called “E.T. Are You Calling Us?” and it takes the reader on a great chase through the search for extrasolar planets and extraterrestrial life, and lets us hear from the movers and shakers in SETI, including Jill Tartar, Geoffrey Marcy and others.

Science isn’t just done by machines, however. The people who build and use the machines are the heroes of exploration, and New Frontiers introduces readers to a good selection of astronomers, astronauts, and other scientists whose jobs are to show the rest of us how the universe works and what’s “out there”. This is the kind of book that will guide another little girl to space, I hope. And, it’s the kind of book I’d love to be asked to write the next time a publisher wants to do a survey of what’s new in astronomy, space science, and exploration. It’s a never-ending story that I hope humans will never lose interest in reading.