Bücher der Reihe Springer Praxis Books

Provides a comprehensive account of the recent 'Spirit' and 'Opportunity' Mars Exploration Rover missions. Discusses the nature of life on Mars in terms of the most primitive forms of life on Earth, and reviews the implications of there being life on both planets.

This is the story of the work of the original NASA space pioneers; men and women who were suddenly organized in 1958 from the then National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) into the Space Task Group. A relatively small group, they developed the initial mission concept plans and procedures for the U. S. space program. Then they boldly built hardware and facilities to accomplish those missions. The group existed only three years before they were transferred to the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas, in 1962, but their organization left a large mark on what would follow.Von Ehrenfried''s personal experience with the STG at Langley uniquely positions him to describe the way the group was structured and how it reacted to the new demands of a post-Sputnik era. He artfully analyzes how the growing space program was managed and what techniques enabled it to develop so quickly from an operations perspective. The result is a fascinating window into history, amply backed up by first person documentation and interviews.

This book celebrates the final spaceflight in the Mercury series, flown by NASA astronaut Gordon Cooper, who led an adventurous life in the cockpit of airplanes and spacecraft alike, and on his Mercury mission he became the last American ever to rocket into space alone.

Three years later, following the sudden cancellation of the USAF's highly classified Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) project, seven military astronauts were also co-opted into NASA's space program. This book represents the final chapter by the authors in the story of American astronaut selections prior to the era of the Space Shuttle.

This book explores the continued rivalry between the two superpowers during this period, with each attempting to outdo the other - the Americans keen to build a space station, the Soviets keen to build a space shuttle - and places their efforts in the context of a bitterly divisive decade, which ultimately led them into partnership.

This book details the way in which the world's plant life partly controls its own environment. It explains some of the underlying mechanisms by which life controls how our planet works, the climate, the atmosphere and the oceans.

The most consistent signatures of climate warming have occurred at northern high latitudes (IPCC, 2001), and the potential impacts of a few degrees increase in surface temperature include a reduction in sea ice extent, a positive feedback to climate warming due to lowering of surface albedo, and changes to surface runo?

Skylab is not just a story of space hardware and space science, but also of space explorers and pioneers.

Over the past 35 years more than 100 individual astronauts and cosmonauts have performed nearly 200 EVAs, (spacewalks), either singularly or in teams in Earth orbit, deep space or on the Moon.

As the debate about the environmental cost of nuclear power and the issue of nuclear safety continues, a comprehensive assessment of the Chernobyl accident, its long-term environmental consequences and solutions to the problems found, is timely.

The authors cover the scientific significance of ring studies, the history of their discovery and characterization, the observations of Pioneer 10 at Jupiter, Pioneer 11 and Voyager 1 at Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 2 at all four giant planets of the solar system, and Galileo at Jupiter.

In its revised 2nd edition, this book examines current understanding of the relationship between sunspots and the Earth's climate.

Even a suitable skeptic of certain pronouncements about the age and structure of the Universe should be pleased with the large steps that have been taken in furthering our understanding of the Universe since the early 1990's. In short, the Universe of our expectations rarely matches the Universe as it is discovered.

This book describes a new tool called the Generic Model System for simulations and assessment of potential radioactive spreading in the Arctic regions.

Contents are divided into major topics where the three "souls" of modern celestial mechanics (dynamical systems, Solar System and stellar systems, spaceflight dynamics) play a major role.

This cutting edge book analyzes the effect of aerosols on the Earth's climate and introduces for the first time satellite aerosol remote sensing over land. The book is written by specialists working at the forefront of research in this important area.

GRBs remain a subject of fascination for scientists, despite having been known about for 35 years. Both authors have been active in GRB observations for more than two decades, so this is an outstanding account of the history and perspectives of GRB research.

Pays considerable attention to various aspects of light absorption inside particles, including internal field distributions, MDR resonances, and absorption in restricted regions inside particles.

They assess the role of different types of soil and vegetation in the assimilation of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and discuss models of the atmosphere ocean gas exchange and its role in the carbon dioxide cycle, paying special attention to the role of the Arctic Basin.

This overview of classical celestial mechanics focuses the interplay with dynamical systems. Paradigmatic models introduce key concepts - order, chaos, invariant curves and cantori - followed by the investigation of dynamical systems with numerical methods.

This book deals with a particular class of approximation methods in the context of light scattering by small particles. Soft particles occur in ocean optics, biomedical optics, atmospheric optics and in many industrial applications. This class of approximations has been termed as eikonal or soft particle approximations.

The present impetus to drive down the overall cost of space missions is leading to ever-increasing demands for more efficient design techniques over a wide range of interplanetary missions, and the methods now being utilised to do this are described in this timely and authoritative work.

The inorganic and organic water constituents, often called color-producing agents (CPAs), responsible for water color are generally referred to as water quality parameters.

This book covers Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) imaging of Aleutian volcanoes. InSAR is a relatively new remote sensing tool whose images enable the construction of detailed mechanical models to enhance the study of magmatic processes.

The theory of the scattering of light by small particles is very important in a wide range of applications in atmospheric physics and atmospheric optics, ocean optics, remote sensing, astronomy and astrophysics and biological optics.

Soviet Robots in the Solar System provides a history of the Soviet robotic lunar and planetary exploration program from its inception, with the attempted launch of a lunar impactor on September 23, 1958, to the last launch in the Russian national scientific space program in the 20th Century, Mars 96, on November 16, 1996.

Once again comprehensive and authoritative, this second edition puts spacecraft propulsion systems in perspective, from earth orbit launchers to astronomical/space exploration vehicles. It includes new material on fusion propulsion, new figures and updates.

This book presents a new approach to the study of global environmental changes that have unfavorable implications for people and other living systems. The book aims to develop a universal information technology to estimate the state of environmental subsystems functioning under various climatic and anthropogenic conditions.