Since the 1950s, Mars has been the obsession of a select group of space scientists who have used their time and their influence - sometimes at the expense of their careers - to push for further exploration of our potentially habitable neighbour. It is largely thanks to the efforts of these men and women that we know as much as we do about the Red Planet.Chaikin's band of Earthbound space explorers includes Bruce Murray, the first geologist to apply his expertise to another planet; rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, who designed spacecraft to take humans to Mars; astronomer Carl Sagan, who popularized scientific agruments supporting the existence of life on other worlds; the 'Mars Underground' of the 1980s, a rogue group of graduate students who created detailed plans for Mars expeditions at a time when everyone else seemed to have given up; Jerry Soffen, an intense biologist who grapples for signs of life in meteorites from Mars and Mike Malin, the brilliant designer of the camera that sent back controversial images suggesting that water flows on the planet's surface.Chaikin's book is illustrated with rare and unusual images that evoke the obsessions and achievements of the Mars explorers, including photographs of the planet and the spacecraft that have travelled there, as well as popular art about Mars and interplanetary space travel.

Andrew Chaikin writes about space and space exploration. His popular A Man on the Moon: The Triumphant Story of the Apollo Space Program (1994) is one of the most important histories of the Space Age. He lives in Arlington, Vermont.