CHAPTER 1: DISCOVERING DISTANT WORLDS 3 CHAPTER 2: MERCURY: THE IRON PLANET 21 CHAPTER 3: VENUS: THE RUNAWAY GREENHOUSE 45 CHAPTER 4: THE MOON: QUEEN OF THE NIGHT 69 5: MARS: THE RED PLANET CHAPTER 101 CHAPTER 6: ASTEROIDS: VERMIN OF THE SKIES 129 CHAPTER 7: JUPITER: KING OF THE PLANETS 147 CHAPTER 8: SATURN: LIGHTWEIGHT LORD OF THE RINGS 185 CHAPTER 9: URANUS: THE TOPPLED GIANT 217 CHAPTER 10: NEPTUNE: THE LAST GIANT 237 CHAPTER 11: PLUTO: KING OF THE KUIPER BELT 257 CHAPTER 12: COMETS: COSMIC ICEBERGS 269 APPENDICES 1: Lunar and Planetary Missions 285 2: Planetary Data 298 3: Satellite Data 299 4: Planetary Rings 305 5: The Largest Known Kuiper Belt Objects 307 6: Lunar and Planetary Firsts 308 7: Selected Reading List 310 8: Selected Websites 314 INDEX 317 VII Until about 500 years ago, the Earth was believed to lie at Pluto and its recently discovered, larger cousin in the far the center of the Universe, with the Sun and five planets reaches of the Sun's realm. For the first time, human eyes revolving around it. The planets themselves were merely have been able to see towering cliffs, dust devils, erupting points of light that drifted across the stellar constellations.

Peter Bond provides an overview of key, unmanned missions, chapter by chapter, to planets in the twentieth century. He tells the story of the mission planners and engineers who, working mostly in the background, made these unprecedented achievements in scientific exploration possible. Bond's perspective provides a much-needed overview, but it also details the very human feelings that animated the intense rivalries between the Soviet Union and the United States, and most recently the difficulties that arose in collaborations between NASA and ESA on the Rosetta and Halley's Comet missions.