A Short Bibliography on Martian Exploration

Roger D. Launius
NASA Chief Historian
rlaunius@hq.nasa.gov

A Short Bibliography on Martian Exploration

1. Baker, Victor R. The Channels of Mars. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982. A detailed scientific study of the features seen from Earth that were first popularized as canals.

2. Bradbury, Ray; Clarke, Arthur C.; Murray, Bruce C.; and Sagan, Carl. Mars and the Mind of Man. New York: Harper and Row, 1973. A superb analysis by a stellar collection of authors, this book discusses the place of the planet Mars in the mythology and science of humanity from the ancients to the late twentieth century.

3. Braun, Wernher von. The Mars Project. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1953. Originally published in Germany the year before, this important study describes in some detail the technical and scientific attributes of a human expedition to Mars that the authors says was feasible in the mid-1950s.

4. Burgess, Eric. To the Red Planet. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978. A very good general interest discussion of what had been learned about Mars from several probes, including the Viking mission if the 1970s.

5. Burrows, William E. Exploring Space: Voyages in the Solar System and Beyond. New York: Random House, 1990. A very well-written and insightful discussion of the robotic probes sent to the planets and what scientists learned from their encounters.

6. Carr, Michael H. The Surface of Mars. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981. A scientific investigation of the geological features of Mars.

7. Collins, Michael. Mission to Mars: An Astronaut's Vision of Our Future in Space. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990. A very fine argument on behalf of an aggressive exploration of the Red Planet, including a recapitulation of the earlier advocacies of this effort.

8. Cooper, Henry S.F. The Search for Life on Mars: Evolution of an Idea. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1980. An excellent encapsulation of the lure of Mars for Americans because of the hope that life might presently, or at some time in the past, be found.

9. Ezell, Edward Clinton, and Ezell, Linda Neumann. On Mars: Exploration of the Red Planet, 1958-1978. Washington, DC: NASA Special Publication-4212, 1984. A detailed study of NASA's efforts to send space probes to Mars, culminating with the soft-landing of the two Viking spacecraft in the mid-1970s.

10. Glasstone, Samuel. The Book of Mars. Washington, DC: NASA Special Publication-179, 1968. This important book explores the development of human knowledge about Mars separating what was known through science, especially space science, and what had been handed down in myth. An excellent point of departure for any investigation of the scientific understanding of the planet, but now outdated because of the results of probes since 1968.

11. Hartmann, William K., and Raper, Odell. The New Mars: The Discoveries of Mariner 9. Washington, DC: NASA Special Publication-337, 1974. A reasonably well-done description of the mission to Mars by Mariner 9 in the early 1970s.

12. Hoyt, William Graves. Lowell and Mars. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1976. An outstanding biography of Percival Lowell, pioneering American astronomer, and his lifelong fascination with Mars and the possibility that it had once been the home of intelligent life that had built canals observable from Earth.

13. Keiffer, H.H.; Jakosky, B.M.; Snyder, C.W.; and Matthews, M.S. Editors. Mars. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992. A detailed collection of scientific papers on the makeup and evolution of the red planet.

14. Matsunaga, Senator Spark M. The Mars Project: Journeys Beyond the Cold War. New York: Hill and Wang, 1986. Written by the then senator from Hawaii, the author posits that in the post-Cold War era cooperation rather than competition should inform space policy. In that context, he advocates the development of a cooperative mission to Mars with the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia.

15. Murray, Bruce C. Journey into Space: The First Three Decades of Space Exploration. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1989. This book is an excellent discussion of the planetary science program written by the former director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

16. National Commission on Space. Pioneering the Space Frontier: The Report of the National Commission on Space. New York: Bantam Books, 1986. Published within a few months after the Challenger accident, although underway for more than a year before the tragedy, this report reflected the perspective of the presidentially-appointed commission's chair, former NASA administrator Thomas O. Paine, in its endorsement of an exceptionally aggressive space exploration agenda that called for a space station, a permanent colony on the Moon, and a mission to Mars before the end of the century.

17. Neal, Valerie. Editor. Where Next, Columbus? The Future of Space Exploration. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. An excellent collection of essays linking the voyage of discovery by Columbus with exploration of space.

18. Putnam, W.L. Editor. The Explorers of Mars Hill: A Centennial History of Lowell Observatory. Phoenix, AZ: Phoenix Publishing, 1994. No observatory in the United States has been more significant than the Lowell established in the last decade of the nineteenth century outside Flagstaff, Arizona. This centennial history describes the origins and development of the observatory from its founding by Percival Lowell to the 1990s.

19. Stoker, Carol A., and Emmart, Carter. Editors. Strategies for Mars: A Guide to Human Exploration. San Diego, CA: Univelt, Inc., 1996. The most up-to-date and useful of several books related to Mars exploration, this collection of essays provides a rationale, technology assessment, and political analysis of the endeavor through the lens of quite a lot of historical perspective.

20. Washburn, Mark. Mars at Last! New York: G.P. Putnam, 1977. The first popular account of the Viking mission to Mars that landed probes on the planet's surface.

21. Wilford, John Noble. Mars Beckons: The Mysteries, the Challenges, the Expectations of Our Next Great Adventure in Space. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990. A superior explanation of the possibilities of Mars exploration, including a discussion of earlier plans to send humans to the red planet.