Cordell Walker, a widower and father of two with his own moral code, returns home to Austin after being undercover for two years, only to discover there's harder work to be done at home.

Cordell Walker, a widower and father of two with his own moral code, returns home to Austin after being undercover for two years, only to discover there's harder work to be done at home.

Cordell Walker, a widower and father of two with his own moral code, returns home to Austin after being undercover for two years, only to discover there's harder work to be done at home.

Cordell Walker, a widower and father of two with his own moral code, returns home to Austin after being undercover for two years, only to discover there's harder work to be done at home.

Cordell Walker, a widower and father of two with his own moral code, returns home to Austin after being undercover for two years, only to discover there's harder work to be done at home.

Cordell Walker, a widower and father of two with his own moral code, returns home to Austin after being undercover for two years, only to discover there's harder work to be done at home.

Cordell Walker, a widower and father of two with his own moral code, returns home to Austin after being undercover for two years, only to discover there's harder work to be done at home.

Cordell Walker, a widower and father of two with his own moral code, returns home to Austin after being undercover for two years, only to discover there's harder work to be done at home.

NASA's first successful mission to another planet, Mariner 2 to Venus in 1962, marked the beginning of what NASA Chief Scientist Jim Green describes in this volume as "a spectacular era" of solar system exploration. In its first 50 years of planetary exploration, NASA sent spacecraft to fly by, orbit, land on, or rove on every planet in our solar system, as well as Earth's Moon and several moons of other planets. Pluto, reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006, was visited by the New Horizons spacecraft in 2015. In this volume, a diverse array of scholars addresses the science, technology, policy, and politics of planetary exploration. This volume offers a collection of in-depth studies of important projects, decisions, and milestones of this era. It is not possible to foresee what the next 50 years of NASA's planetary exploration program will reveal. However, the 2020s are already looking promising. Planetary missions in recent years have focused more and more on exploring potentially habitable environments in our solar system and developing a more in-depth understanding of the evolution of planetary environments. It is safe to say that by 2062, our understanding of our solar system will be radically different than it is today. And we will look forward to it.

In 2016, NASA took on a new responsibility: defending our planet from devastating impacts by asteroids and comets that approach the Earth, or near-Earth objects. That event, which followed the prominent Chelyabinsk meteor explosion in 2013, reflected a growing interest in, and concern about, the threat of celestial impacts. In ancient times, the solar system’s small bodies—asteroids and comets—were sometimes seen as ill omens and warnings from the gods. In modern times, they have come to be seen as the solar system’s rubble, leftovers from its formation, but were still largely ignored until the late 20th century. Increasingly, they have been seen by scientists as objects worthy of study, by the general public and the U.S. government as potential threats to be mitigated, and by space advocates as future resources. This book tells the fascinating story of these reinterpretations and NASA’s role in them.