The Mission

November 1, 2020
The inner workings of NASA through an enthusiastic account of an interplanetary probe to a distant moon. Although space travel hasn't enraptured the U.S. since the 1969 Apollo moon landing, NASA continues to accomplish great feats, and more are in the offing, including this book's subject: the 2024 launch of a multibillion-dollar spacecraft to explore Jupiter's moon Europa. To puzzled readers, journalist and Army veteran Brown explains that the Galileo probe, which orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003, discovered a liquid water ocean beneath Europa's icy surface. Life requires liquid water, and despite a torrent of probes and landers, none has turned up on Mars. No president since Lyndon Johnson has shown a genuine interest in space travel, a feeling shared by Congress with rare exceptions, including one of Brown's unlikely heroes, a conservative from Texas. Furthermore, when Congress doles out tax money, anything involving astronauts takes priority. Even space buffs struggle to name a discovery produced by the manned space station, but robotic probes often return spectacular discoveries. Despite this, unmanned programs struggle for attention in this "astronaut-led, astronaut-centric organization," but its scientists and engineers contain many brilliant workaholics. Brown delivers breathless biographies of a dozen as he describes their effort, now passing 20 years, to explore Europa. Since the 1990s, they have seen several proposals approved and then killed, but the Europa Clipper mission will probably happen for the only reason space programs happen: Congress approved the money. Readers will roll their eyes but keep reading as Brown engagingly describes the cutthroat NASA political landscape, in which Mars gets the most attention, leaving advocates of other planets fuming. Leading-edge technology usually goes over budget, but Congress rarely makes up the difference, so high priority space programs that run short extract money from other programs and sometimes get them cancelled. Few experts expect the 2024 launch date to hold, but some time after 2030, we may find evidence of fish on Europa. A delightful slice of NASA life.

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Starred review from November 23, 2020
Journalist Brown (Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry) brings to vivid life the 17-year effort to put together a mission to Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons. At the heart of the quest is Robert Pappalardo, a plucky planetary scientist whose expertise was in “icy moons” (and who studied under Carl Sagan at Cornell). Dissatisfied with his life as a professor and at the request of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in 2006 Pappalardo “packed his life and his cat and pointed his car westerly” to California to build a program to find life on Europa. There, he “oversaw all decisions affecting the project science” and in 2014 met with the administrator of NASA, to whom he “made the science case for Europa.” Meanwhile, NASA was focused on sending robots to Mars, White House support for space exploration waffled from one administration to the next, and rival planetary scientists fought to fund their own projects. Not until 2015 was the Europa Clipper mission greenlighted by NASA. (Its launch date is still undetermined.) Brown skillfully braids biography, science, obsession, and accounts of bureaucracy-wrangling into this mesmerizing tale of “good, bare-fisted science.” Salted with pop culture references and humor, Brown’s fascinating outing will entertain anyone curious about space exploration. Agent: Stacia Decker, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner.

December 1, 2020
What goes on behind the scenes at NASA? What do these scientists who shoot rockets into space, probe the innermost secrets of the solar system, and land astronauts on the moon actually do, and how do they do it? It turns out, according to Brown, that they compete with each other a lot. Brown reveals this as he tells the dream-come-true story of the team who put together the first deep-space flyby mission to Europa, a moon of Jupiter's, a much-debated quest that took 20 years to complete. Brown notes that Europa has fascinated stargazers since its discovery by Galileo, and once evidence suggested that it may contain life beneath its icy shell, scientists were determined to get close enough to study it in detail. In an account in which all strands lead back to Carl Sagan, Brown leaves no door closed as he covers the science, logistics, personalities, and politics of this extraordinary NASA mission. His extensively researched, humorous, raucous, dramatic, and pop-culture- and science-fiction-laced immersion in planetary science will have readers hanging on every word.

COPYRIGHT(2020) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 1, 2021

Journalist Brown provides a narrative of one of the most ambitious science projects ever conceived: NASA's deep-space mission to Europa. This true story has not been previously written about in such detail. Europa, one of the moons orbiting Jupiter, has miles of ice that may contain an ocean that may contain life. The story begins with Bob Pappalardo, a former disciple of Carl Sagan while a student at Cornell University. Pappalardo had multiple stops in academia and developed a doctoral thesis that focused on Jupiter's moons. He would become Project Scientist for a motley crew focused on developing a mission to explore Europa. This eclectic team encounters multiple challenges, including navigating the complexities of NASA, the White House, Congress, members of academia, and even Jupiter itself. The grit and persistence, mixed with the idealism of the group, led to creative approaches for completing the mission, including hitching a ride on another rocket launch designed to send a robot to Jupiter. This inspiring story provides a look into some of the characteristics needed to make change in a large industrial complex. Extensive notes are provided for further research. VERDICT An engaging read for all, especially for anyone curious about the details of space exploration.--Gary Medina, El Camino Coll., Torrance, CA

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