Mars has always been a popular topic among the space cognoscenti, but recent years have seen a resurgence of interest due to the renewed promise of manned exploration of the red planet. If the promise bears fruit, The International Atlas of Mars Exploration may be ‘required reading’ for future Mars astronauts, especially those following the wheel tracks of the rovers.
The first volume covered Mars missions up to 2003, the second spanned 2004-2014 and this third volume – with the subtitle “Curiosity, Insight and Perseverance” - extends this to 2021. Together, they represent a veritable tour de force in space publishing and a labour of love on behalf of the author, Philip Stooke, a professional cartographer and imaging expert. As the Foreword points out, “Phil has never been a member of a mission science team”, but has used his skills to make the mountains of data available from the Mars landers accessible to those beyond the firewalls of mission control.
Although the author and his publisher call this book an atlas, it is more of a nod to its place in CUP’s “Atlas of” series than a descriptor for a ‘book of maps’. Although it does contain cartographic representations of Mars (predominantly annotated photographs from Mars orbit), it is effectively a day-by-day guide to teleoperated Mars exploration. In fact, the author cleverly steals the reviewer’s thunder with his warning that “A sol-by-sol account of a mission lasting many years makes for very repetitive reading”, advising readers that it’s more of “a book to dip into”. This is very good advice!
The 600-odd pages are divided into sections that cover the missions more-or-less chronologically, detailing the routes taken by the rovers and many of the observations made along the way. The structure of the text is unusual in having only three chapters, the first of which – “Chronological sequence of missions and events” – is 575 pages long! So, given that the mission list covers only half a page, it’s a bit disappointing that the index is not more comprehensive. Why, for instance, are the many instrument names not included? And why is there no list of acronyms and abbreviations? If you ‘dip into’ the text 25 pages after first mention of MAHLI, MARDI or MEDLI, you’re in trouble!
Although the volume concentrates on the Curiosity, Insight and Perseverance landers, it also includes orbiter missions. Note, however, that this is not a spacecraft book and any images of spacecraft hardware are purely incidental: a drill or scoop here, a landing leg there. There are lots of images, but they are all in black-and-white…which is a pity considering that this is a book about the red planet. Of course, this is an academic text, but even academics would appreciate a bit of colour with their data (especially given the cover price of the volume).
As the author suggests in his preface, he’s done a lot of the hard work in collating information from disparate sources and has drawn maps to illustrate the data collection routes of the rovers…the implication being so that ‘no-one else has to do this’. Future academic researchers and writers of books about the history of Mars exploration will be forever grateful.
