The Mission: A True Story

About this book

Exceptionally absorbing and thrilling. ... Masterful. Nature A "magnificent" (Scientific American) genre-defying narrative of the most ambitious science project ever conceived: NASAs deep space mission to Europa the Jovian moon where might swim the first known alien life in our solar system In the spirit of Tom Wolfe and John McPhee The Mission is an exuberant master class of creative nonfiction that reveals how a motley determined few expanded the horizon of human achievement. When scientists discovered the first ocean beyond Earth they had two big questions: Is it habitable? and How do we get there? To answer the first they had to solve the second and so began a vivacious teams twenty-year odyssey to mount a mission to Europa the ocean moon of Jupiter. Standing in their way: NASA fanatically consumed with landing robots on Mars; the White House which never saw a science budget it couldnt cut; Congress fixated on going to the moon or Marsanywhere really to give astronauts something to do; rivals in academia who wanted instead to go to Saturn; and even Jupiter itself which guards Europa in a pulsing rippling radiation belta halo of death whose conditions are like those that follow a detonated thermonuclear bomb. The Mission is the Homeric never-before-told story of modern space exploration and a magnificent portrait of the inner lives of scientists who study the solar systems mysterious outer planets. David W. Brown chronicles the remarkable saga of how Europa was won and what it takes to get things doneboth down here and up there.