Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes

Since the 1960s, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has been sending unmanned satellites to explore the planets, moons and sun; amassing a stunning visual record of other worlds. This book presents spectacular images as art, and essays that explain the story behind them - the history of the probes' journeys, how they work, and more.

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Since the 1960s, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has been sending unmanned satellites to explore the planets, moons and sun. These probes have amassed a stunning visual record of other worlds, revealing not one but scores of new frontiers, from rust-red Mars to the ethereal rings of Saturn. In "Beyond", author Michael Benson has pulled together the most spectacular of these images into one volume that presents these photographs for the first time as art. The resulting book consists of two parts: the first is a spectacular visual tour of the solar system, with views every bit as compelling as the work of the great landscape photographers on earth; the second is a series of beautifully written essays that explain the story behind these photographs: the history of the probes' journeys, how they work and why they were built. This book shows us how modern science has revealed the astonishing beauty and mystery of the solar system and its awe-inspiring worlds far beyond any places human beings have ever directly observed.