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Dreams of Other Worlds describes the unmanned space missions that have opened new windows on distant worlds. Spanning four decades of dramatic advances in astronomy and planetary science, this book tells the story of eleven iconic exploratory missions and how they have fundamentally transformed our scientific and cultural perspectives on the universe and our place in it. The journey begins with the Viking and Mars Exploration Rover missions to Mars, which paint a startling picture of a planet at the cusp of habitability. It then moves into the realm of the gas giants with the Voyager probes and Cassini's ongoing exploration of the moons of Saturn. The Stardust probe's dramatic round-trip encounter with a comet is brought vividly to life, as are the SOHO and Hipparcos missions to study the Sun and Milky Way.



About the Author

Chris Impey

Chris Impey is a University Distinguished Professor in the Astronomy Department and Associate Dean in the College of Science at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He has written popular articles on astronomy and is the author of a number of popular science books. is a tour of the search for life in the universe, and the pair of books and cover the origin and fate of everything in the universe. is a series of conversations with pioneers in astrobiology. With Holly Henry, he wrote about the scientific and cultural impact of a dozen iconic NASA missions, . A book about his experiences teaching cosmology to Tibetan monks, was published in 2014, and his book about the future of humans in space, called , was published in 2015. His first novel is called



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