Getting closer looks at Mars has long been both an alluring goal of the U.S. space program and one of its most spectacular technological achievements. Here Scott recaps the progress thus far, from the invention of the telescope to the Phoenix Mars mission that, she notes, made a successful landing just as her report was going to press. Along with a fine array of large, composite space images, surface-level photographs and digital paintings that include pictures of all the probes currently orbiting the Red Planet, she enhances her summary of each mission’s achievements and findings with a diagram that identifies every scientific instrument aboard the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. The text tantalizes readers with closing profiles of upcoming Mars ventures and a quick glimpse of current efforts to reproduce Martian living conditions on this planet. Readers will come away with both a coherent historical overview and a heady sense that we are on the verge of some epoch-making discoveries. (resource list) (Nonfiction. 11-13)
