Seeing Like a Rover: How Robots, Teams, and Images Craft Knowledge of Mars

In 2004, two identical NASA rovers were deployed on the surface of Mars. Eleven years later, one of them is still functional. The mission is considered an unabated success, as both rovers gathered conclusive evidence that liquid water played a role in the evolution of the Martian landscape. Those rovers were part of an intensive program for the exploration of Mars, involving automated probes collecting data through a myriad of instruments. One thing they have in common: they all acquire images. They all see Mars. There have been many books about Mars, its geology, the way humans have seen and dreamed the red planet, and the many robotic missions exploring it. This is another book that will undoubtedly appeal to anyone interested in the exploration of the Solar System. But what one will find between its covers is not just a simple narrative of scientific discovery, or of using instruments aboard rovers. The author, a sociologist and historian of science now at the University