Rovers

My blog is about the book that I read. The title is The Mighty Mars Rovers: The Incredible Adventures of Spirit and Opportunity by Elizabeth Rusch. It tells about Steve Squeyers' life and the lives of his two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. Spirit and Opportunity are two rovers that were created by Steve Squeyers, he was interested with Mars at a young age. Even though NASA wanted people on Mars, Steve wanted to create a new way to study the Martian archeology without needing human space travels. He wanted to create rovers.

After several years of waiting Steve Squeyers final had NASA to agree in the production of the two rovers. It took 170 scientist to make the two rovers. The rovers had a rock abrasion tool or a RAT,

an alpha particle x-ray spectromiter

or APXS, and a micro imager or MI which is basically a microscope. The rovers were to have this many instruments and more because they are explorers and investigators. The rovers are meant to be able to respond and gather data of the Martian territory just as well as an actual scientist. All of the instruments are needed to gather more data about Mars.

I believe that this is a great book for young middle schoolers or for a person looking for a brief background on the story of Opportunity and Spirit because of the format of the writing itself. I do believe that it scientific, but I found the author was using simpler terminology and it seemed to explanatory for my liking. Also, the book was more of a biography of the two unlike most science related books. Elizabeth wrote the story in a 3rd person view primarily towards the rovers.  It felt like it had more of a children story attributes. To close, this is indeed a wonderful book for young middle schoolers interested in Mars rovers.