Mars Up Close: Inside the Curiosity Mission Hardcover – August 5, 2014

To be sure, if I were going to rate this book for beauty and information about many of the people who made MOST of the MSL mission a success, I would give it 5 stars. So why did I rate it just 2 stars? Because it contains disinformation. My son and I have done a 6-year in depth study of the Martian atmosphere trying to determine how a planet with an accepted near-vacuum average pressure of 6.1 millibars (compared to 1,013.25 mbar on Earth) can have such a bright (blue) sky, enormous and highly frequent dust devils, global dust storms, storms over the mountain Arsia Mons with 10 km-wide eye walls, moving barchan sands dunes, sand filling in tracks of rovers, snow seen falling at Phoenix, excessive aerobraking of orbiters, and stratus clouds 13 km above areoid (the equivalent of sea level on Mars). We have gotten JPL to pull down erroneous wind data, and forced many other corrections to data posted by the REMS team. In short, we show in our 700-page report, Mars Correct: Critique of All NASA Mars Weather Data, with Emphasis on Pressure, that air pressure on Mars is about 83 times higher than NASA asserts. We point out problems with pressure transducer design (dust filters clog on landing, and there is no way to change them) causing pressure measured to vary inversely with heat applied to pressure sensors behind dust clots. Mars Up Close totally avoids weather data problems with Curiosity. It only tells us that a wind sensor flew off on landing. There can be only two reasons for JPL’s loyalty to low pressures on Mars. One is human error, the other is disinformation. We cannot blame Marc Kaufman for being led by the nose by JPL to overlook the lack of or absolutely wrong weather data that is published by JPL every day, but if Elon Musk wants to finish his life on Mars we would strong advise him to view the PowerPoint for and read the Basic Report for our Mars Correct report. Elon, when you have done that, please contact us so we can point you in the right direction. You own condos in our Shorewood complex here in Cape Canaveral. Stop by for dinner if you visit.

I bought this book on establishing a presence on Mars FIVE years ago. My granddaughter was enchanted by the concept and the pictures and the technology. Now she says science is her favorite subject ... and frankly I credit this book, among others, for feeding that interest. Now we both get a kick when she reads the captions under the pictures, as Mars has always been one of my favorite subjects, speaking of which, here is another great Mars book that is never included in the "Customers who viewed this item also viewed" lists on the product pages. That is a shame, That is neither logical or reasonable:https://www.amazon.com/Mars-Movies-Thomas-Kent-Miller-ebook/dp/B01N8TQ3NB/https://www.amazon.com/Mars-Movies-Thomas-Kent-Miller-dp-0786499141/dp/0786499141/

My son found this at one of the big name book sellers and was really begging for it. I said no at the time for many reasons, he was only 6, it was huge and pretty advanced, and it was very expensive. I promised I'd look around for a better price and was pleased to find it on Amazon. I bought it for him for his birthday, and boy was he thrilled! I did not think that my (now 7 year old) kid would be as interested in this book, but he is absolutely a science lover. He has read many pages independently, and with help. It has fueled his interest and curiosity and lead us down an awesome road of discovery and exploration into Nasa, Outer Space, Earth, and so much more science related stuff. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in Mars, the rovers, Nasa exploration, or Outer Space enthusiasts.

I only took a brief look at it as I was sending it to my high school age grandson who is really into science! He said I is a wonderful and very interesting book, and I can vouch for the photography which is spectacular!

This made a very nice gift.

This is great for the Mars enthusiast.

The positive reviews above are spot-on. I can only rate it three stars, though, because my copy has a strong, harsh chemical smell. I have to hold it at arm's length to read it, and if I read it for more than 20 minutes I get a headache.

I was somewhat disappointed by the size and weight of the book. It is very well done although a little disjointed when you read it. It is more of a coffee table book than one you can take with you to read.

excellent book

Simply Stunning photography...trippy stuff!!

I am really enjoying reading this book. The science is described to the necessary level of detail. It is enough to make one appreciate the excitement of the discoveries, which were really quite striking! In the press releases, sometimes the media just picks on the ``water found on Mars'', which seems repetitive. This book describes what is actually happening, and the striking advances that have shown that Mars really was inhabitable, and not only in the earlier eras.The book was published in 2014. I wish an update were published during the next few years.Weakness: If you are looking for a show of grand Martian vistas, this is not the book for you. Jim Bell's ``Postcards from Mars" vast, double (or quadruple) fold panoramas, based just on the two initial years of the Spirit and Oppportunity missions, offers much more compelling views.It should be possible to make much better than ``Postcards from Mars" with Curiosity's vastly superior photography, and more scenic location. But no, none of those grand high-resolution, sweeping views were presented in this book about Curiosity, which really is a shame. This is even more surprising considering that the book was edited by National Geographic - knowing how to present grand photography should be part of their core competence.More frustratingly, no other books on offer even bother to attempt to show us those panoramas and grand vistas.So, please, National Geographic, if you ever re-edit (or preferably updated) this book with its amazingly well-written text, don't just tell me about Curiosity's 17 cameras. I want to see what those cameras are actually capable of.

If you are a big fan of this kind of science and engineering you love this book. Nice quality printing. Yes! There are tons of free photos to be found online but it's just nice to have it all in book form too. Not enough good quality books like this on the NASA Rover out there. 10 Stars!

Soy un aficionado a la astronomía y a la exploración de Marte. Me ha encantado la presentación, encuadernación y sobre todo las fotografías a toda página que lleva. Muy bien redactado y lo recomiendo para aquellas personas que quieren saber mas sobre la misión Curiosity.Tener en cuenta que está en inglés muy técnico pero a la vez muy fácil de entender.