Book Description

"Much more is observed than Venus in The Evening Star, a smoothly written account of the Magellan spacecraft... Mr. Cooper is able to convey the sense of excitement felt by the engineers and scientists. But the star of the story is definitely Venus."--New York Times. "The anger and the arguments, the petty feuds, the politics of science, the grubbing for grants, make fascinating reading."--Nature. In size, density, and composition, Venus is almost identical to Earth, yet its nature and history turn out to be as different as close relatives sometimes can be. In The Evening Star Henry S. F. Cooper, Jr., veteran science and space reporter for the New Yorker, tracks the Magellan spacecraft that has been mapping Venus from orbit since August 1990. In eloquent, vivid prose, Cooper introduces us to the engineers who have nursed the spacecraft's fragile electronics and the scientists who have used the spacecraft's data to assemble a picture of this strange new world. An evocative narrative of the people who do science and the challenges that confront them, The Evening Star is an illuminating portrait not only of Venus's character but of Earth's as well, and of the place of the two siblings in the family of planets. "What makes this a particularly gripping story is that the author had extraordinary access to the project scientists. The result is a superb first-hand account of the Magellan scientists grapplingwith the bizarre geology of a world in the grip of a runaway greenhouse effect... Lucid, informative, and entertaining."--Air & Space. "A unique perspective on the Magellan program, seen through the eyes of the engineers and scientists working on it."--Christian Science Monitor.