Sojourner; An Insider's View of the Mars Pathfinder Mission Hardcover - 2003

New York: Berkley Books, 2003. First American Edition [stated], First printing [stated]. Hardcover. Good/Very good. xiv, [2], 333, [3] pages. Illustrations. Glossary. Dramatis Personae, Index. Slightly cocked. Andrew Mishkin (born c. 1958 in Los Angeles) is a senior systems engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he coordinated the development of various robotic vehicles and their subsystems for more than 15 years. He was on the Sojourner rover team at its formation, eventually leading the team and commanding the rover during its exploration of Mars. In 1997 he received the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal and was also selected as one of "The 35 People Who Made the Year" in the December issue of Vanity Fair magazine. He grew up in West Los Angeles, graduated from University High School (Los Angeles, California), and then obtained a BS degree in Systems Engineering (man/machine systems) and an MS in Engineering (problem solving and decision making) from UCLA. In 2003 he wrote the book Sojourner: An Insider's View of the Mars Pathfinder Mission. Andrew Mishkin, a senior systems engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a leader of NASA's robotic program, delivers an insider's look at the Mars Pathfinder probe that electrified the world's imagination. From 122 million miles away, a sophisticated robot smaller than a microwave oven did what had never been done before-explore the rocky, red terrain of Mars. Then, six-wheeled Sojourner beamed spectacular pictures of her one-of-a-kind mission back to Earth. Now, with the touch of an expert writer, Sojourner operations team leader Andrew Mishkin tells the inside, human story of the Mars Pathfinder mission's feverish efforts to build a self-guided, offroading robot to explore the surface of the Red Planet. He describes the clash of temperamental geniuses, the invention of a new work ethic, the turf wars, the solutions to high-tech problems, the controlled chaos behind the creation of an artificial intelligence-and the exhilaration of inaugurating the next great age of space exploration.