Humans have used tools since our species arose hundreds of thousands of years ago. But our ability to send specialized tools, robotic spacecraft, into the heavens and leave our mark on the cosmos has spanned only the last 60 years. This book is a chronicle of our attempts to send these robotic travelers beyond Earth orbit, to the Moon, to other planets and their moons, to the Sun, to comets, to minor planets, to dwarf planets, and ultimately beyond the solar system. This remarkable international chronology goes from the early Cold War superpower competition to more recent and compelling scientific quests. From Sputnik to Cassini to Mars rovers and many more, this book is filled with many technical details and also stories of incredible hardships and successes of robotic space exploration.

Asif A. Siddiqi is a Professor of History at Fordham University in New York. He specializes in the history of science and technology and modern Russian history, having received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 2004. He has written extensively on a variety of topics related to the history of science and technology, especially on the social and cultural dimensions of the Russian fascination with the cosmos.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.