Mission

A masterful, genre-defying narrative of the most ambitious science project ever conceived: NASAs deep-space mission to Europathe Jovian moon where might swim the first known alien life in our solar systempowered by a motley team of obsessives and eccentrics.When scientists discovered the first ocean beyond Earth, they had two big questions: Is it habitable? and How do we get there? To answer the first, they had to answer the second, and so began a vivacious teams twenty-year odyssey to mount a mission to Europa, the ocean moon of Jupiter.Standing in their way: NASA, fanatically consumed with landing robots on Mars; the White House, which never saw a science budget it couldnt cut; Congress, fixated on going to the moon or Marsanywhere, really, to give astronauts something to do; rivals in academia, who wanted instead to go to Saturn; and even Jupiter itself, which guards Europa in a pulsing, rippling, radiation belta halo of death whose conditions are like those that follow a detonated thermonuclear bomb.The Mission is the Homeric, never-before-told story of modern space exploration, and a magnificent portrait of the inner lives of scientists who study the solar systems mysterious outer planets. David W. Brown chronicles the remarkable saga of how Europa was won, and what it takes to get things donedown here, and up there.Written with verve, humor, and uncanny empathy, The Mission is an exuberant masterclass in how a few determined cogs can change an entire machine.