Robotic Exploration of the Solar System: Part I: The Golden Age 1957-1982 (Springer Praxis Books)

This fascinating book is a must-have text for space enthusiasts with an engineering bent. It is a detailed history of unmanned missions that have explored our solar system. The subject is treated wherever possible from an engineering and scientific standpoint and includes technical descriptions of the spacecraft, their mission designs and their instrumentations. Scientific results are discussed in depth, together with details of mission management. The book is fantastically comprehensive, covering missions and results from the 1950s right up to the present day. Some of the latest missions and their results appear in a popular science book for the first time.