This is a great book of real exploration on another world. The author made this an exceptional book by combining two techniques. First, he writes an exciting forst-person story of exploring the unknown and making important discoveries with two Mars rovers.

Secondly, he presents stunning photos from the surface of Mars that illustrate his text and often show the discoveries made.

The book concludes as the rovers are stil active and one rover is stil on a three year journey to a large distant crater.

I happened to purchase this book about three years after one of the rovers started on this 13 mile journey and within weeks of its arrival on the edge of the crater. The images of the large crater and its boulders on the rim are just now coming in, eight years after the rover landed on Mars. This is such a success story of exploration it ranks with classic exploration stories.

Mr. Bell has done an outstanding job presenting true exploration in an exciting way and with stunning photos. And it is all non-fiction and still unfolding.

This is the kind of literature that could motivate young people to both learn and to explore.

I recommend this book to anyone curious about exploration or about applying science and engineering to a specific goal. ( )

Basically this book has two parts: the photographs and the text. There is some overlap between them, but they are not really connected. Best considered as two separate books in one, a picture book and a book-length National Geographic article.

The text is organized into three chapters: mission background, Spirit's mission results, and Opportunity's mission results. It does a fine job of explaining what, exactly, each rover has done, found, and where they have gone, much of which I had found quite difficult to keep straight over two years from news reports and web updates. It is not very technical, but still quite informative. It's not just good science writing, it's just plain ol' good writing.

The photos themselves are lovely, even gorgeous and fascinating, and there are lots of multi-page fold-out spreads. But. The captions are minimalist, they don't always identify or describe interesting features in the photos (and don't expect the text to be of any help with respect to any particular photo), and the captions for at least two photos are switched. Very few photos or their captions provide information to help you orient the view. In that respect the photos are very much like looking at someone's vacation pics, where you don't expect to know or care about orientation – but with respect to photos from basically the first mobile exploration of another planet, I found that to be an appallingly thoughtless or careless omission.

My other big complaint is that there is very little connection between the text and the photos. The text mentions many photos from the mission, and some of them are included in the book, and with a little effort you can identify which ones they are, but the book doesn't tell you. ( )