In Journey Beyond Selene, Jeffrey Kluger brings to life an unheralded band of cutting-edge space explorers with their own stunning brand of the right stuff. He has written an adventure story that is full of drama, danger, and triumph -- the story of the men and women who have taken us to the ends of the solar system. The spaceships are flying. The most ambitious, most thrilling expeditions in history are under way, exploring worlds billions of miles from Earth. In Journey Beyond Selene, bestselling author Jeffrey Kluger tells for the first time the fascinating story of the people who are making these voyages of discovery happen -- the daring, determined, and brilliant men and women of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. JPL's scientists and engineers have been on the cutting edge of exploration for more than forty years, hammering together unmanned spaceships, mounting them atop rockets, and flinging them not just to our own moon -- the nearby world the Greeks called Selene -- but to the ends of the solar system. In the course of their journeys, these robot spacecraft have visited seven of the eight other planets and -- more important -- the sparkling swarms of multicolored moons that circle them. What they've found is astonishing. In addition to discovering many more moons than astronomers thought existed, JPL scientists have found these worlds to be stranger than anyone imagined. Their fanciful names -- Ophelia, Europa, Despina, Titania, Pandora, Pan, Puck -- only hint at their fantastic nature. They are worlds where volcanoes spew glittering snow, rivers run with scalding ammonia, geysers spout carbonated water, fires burn on one moon and dust the cliffs of another with ash, where whole globes shatter to shrapnel and then eerily reassemble themselves. And they are places where life might be taking hold even now. The story of the solar system's sixty-three moons is extraordinary, but the story of how JPL scientists have explored them is even more so. It took furious bureaucratic battles to get these spacecraft built, and it meant overcoming enormous technical obstacles to get them flying. There have been, inevitably, near disasters along the way. The story is still unfolding, as future missions are poised to go back to many of those distant moons. One will attempt to land on Jupiter's ice-covered Europa and sample its salty sea for signs of life. A perfect blend of science and adventure, Journey Beyond Selene is a riveting account of the men and women who build and fly the incredible unmanned spaceships that are unlocking the secrets of the solar system -- and perhaps of life itself. Read Less