This book opens the door to the intriguing world of interplanetary flight. It provides a highly focused, insider’s view of current and recent interplanetary space exploration, describing all the different aspects of the many individual space-exploring machines that operate throughout our Solar System. The book:


Illuminates the ‘science pipeline’, enabling readers to follow any specific interplanetary mission(s) and access the science datastream,


Covers concisely the space-related fields of specialization and how they interrelate in interplanetary flight,


Provides an insider’s guide of what is involved in the conduct of robotic interplanetary mission,


Gives a snapshot of what has been going on in interplanetary flight in the last 25 years of the Space age.

Deep Space Craft shows how, in order to make sense of all the scientific data coming back to Earth, the need for experiments and instrumentation arises, and follows the design and construction of the instruments through to their placement and testing on a spacecraft prior to launch. Examples are given of the interaction between an instrument’s science team and the mission’s flight team to plan and specify observations, gather and analyze data in flight, and finally present the results and discoveries to the scientific community.