21st Century Complete Guide to the NASA Planet Finder Program: The Search for Another Earth--Kepler, Webb Space Telescope, Origins, Terrestrial Planet Finder, Interferometry (CD-ROM)

This comprehensive CD-ROM provides the complete story of NASA's program to find planets like Earth, using the planned James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the scientific and technological successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, and other new assets. With a 6-meter class segmented active optic primary deployable mirror, and three major instruments (Near-Infrared Multi-Object Spectrometer, Near-Infrared Camera, Mid-Infrared Camera/Spectrometer), the JWST will be placed in orbit at Lagrange Point 2 (1.5-million km or 940,000 miles from Earth). JWST will allow us to see even farther into space than is currently possible with Hubble. These nascent stars and galaxies are so distant that by the time their light reaches us, it has stretched into the longer, redder wavelength bands and is invisible to the human eye. JWST is the centerpiece of the NASA Origins Program:

The Origins program takes up the challenge of answering questions as old as our species. Where did we come from? Are we alone? When the answers to these questions are known, our civilizations will evolve new visions of who we are and what our futures might be. Already we have learned enough to appreciate that the universe is enormous and ancient, but life tiny and transient is its precious jewel. In the first few decades of this new century astronomers will largely complete the study of cosmology: the description of the universe on the largest scales and how it works. With the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) we will also begin to write the final chapter of the story of galaxies, witnessing the actual birth of these continents of stars. In particular we will chart the13-billion-year history of the Milky Way Galaxy we inhabit, understanding how the materials for new stars, planets, and life were generated and distributed. SIRTF and JWST will also lead the way in studying the birth of stars with their families of planets, moons, comets, and asteroids. Led by the Terrestrial Planet Finder, we will peer one-by-one at our hundreds of nearest neighbor stars and inventory their planets, searching for solar systems resembling our own with a balmy, wet planet like Earth. JWST, Planet Finder, Keck Interferometer, and the Origins Program are comprehensive covered, with dozens of program documents, photographs, charts, and tables. Please note that this material is also published under another title as ISBN 1592484859.

In all, this CD-ROM has over 17,000 pages reproduced using Adobe Acrobat PDF software - allowing direct viewing on Windows and Apple Macintosh systems. Reader software is included on the CD. There is no other reference that is as fast, convenient, comprehensive, and portable.

Our CD-ROMs are privately-compiled collections of official public domain U.S. government files and documents - they are not produced by the federal government. They are designed to provide a convenient user-friendly reference work, utilizing the benefits of the Acrobat format to uniformly present thousands of pages that can be rapidly reviewed or printed without untold hours of tedious searching and downloading. Vast archives of important public domain government information that might otherwise remain inaccessible are available for instant review no matter where you are. This book-on-a-disc makes a great reference work and educational tool.