New astronomy and space titles reviewed BOOKS
The Sirens of Mars
Sarah Stewart Johnson
Allen Lane £20 • HB
Surely there is life on Mars – or at least that is what was thought by astronomers from the late 1600s all the way up to the 1980s. But in recent years that statement has taken on a whole new meaning. This book takes us on a voyage through our relationship with the Red Planet and makes us appreciate the tremendous journey it has made in the popular zeitgeist, from a world covered in carefully engineered canals for advanced alien inhabitants, to a lush vegetated haven and finally to the cold, ancient and desolate wasteland we know today.
Looking behind the scenes of life as a modern planetary scientist,follows the author’s experiences of the lows and highs of many of the most celebrated Mars missions. The linear timeline of exploration helps to anchor Sarah Stewart Johnson’s story to the big question of “Is there life on Mars?”. We follow along with her as she realises the implications of highly acidic material uncovered by Opportunity, sit with her in the Mojave Desert mapping the landscape of alien terrain on Earth, and sympathise with the feeling of isolation and separation from the world as she adjusts to ‘Martian time’ in the control room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, monitoring rovers on a distant world.
