BBC Sky at Night - UK (2021-08)

Dhara Patel
Royal Observatory Greenwich
£9.99 z PB

Space Exploration
is a beautiful little
book, furnishing
its reader with a
comprehensive
overview of our
millennia-old love
affair with the
cosmos. Penned by
Royal Observatory
Greenwich
astronomer and educator Dhara Patel,
its prose packs an appreciable punch
of knowledge for its diminutive size,
although conversely the narrative can
often feel somewhat bland and clunky.
Patel traces humanity’s fascination
with the sky from our earliest ancestors,
through religion and astrology, to the dawn
of modern scientific awareness. She guides
us assuredly through key issues, concepts
and questions and pays due deference
to the towering figures of the past
who shaped our comprehension of the

Universe around us. She explores the

history of space travel from its dawn to the

present and offers a tantalising glimpse of

the future. Her background and expertise

in physics is reflected in the ease with

which she explains the fundamentals of

telescopes and eyepieces to the lay reader.

From time to time, Patel drops

unexpectedly delightful anecdotes into her

tale – from a young Wernher von Braun

tying fireworks to a toy car, to the eerie

solitude of Apollo 11’s Mike Collins in lunar

orbit – but this does not always save the

book from being stylistically mechanical in

places. That said, Space Exploration does

what it says on the tin: it treats its subject

with the confidence and succinctness of

an expert and Patel’s skill provides a good

introduction to the subject for amateur

and professional alike. ★★★★★

Ben Evans is the author of several

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science and astronomy writer

Katherine Johnson, Joylette Hylick,
Katherine Moore
Harper Collins
£20 z HB

If you have seen
the 2016 movie
Hidden Figures,
about the group of
African-American
women who
worked as ‘human
computers’ for
NASA during the
era of the Space
Race, then you
already know about Katherine Johnson.
This book is her story, in her own words.
Born in rural West Virginia at the end of
World War One in 1918, she died in 2020 at
the age of 101. Her life spanned the Great
Depression, World War Two, the Civil Rights
movement, the Space Race and beyond.
She was awarded the Presidential Medal of
Freedom by President Barack Obama in
2015 and was given a standing ovation at
the 89th Academy Awards in 2017.

Education was of paramount

importance and her parents made sure

she and her siblings received the best

possible. A talented mathematician from

childhood, she entered college at just 15.

The chapters dedicated to her work at

NASA through the Mercury, Gemini and

Apollo missions are fascinating and

detailed. Her work put the first Americans

in space, and even when the first electronic

computers were introduced at NASA she

had to double check their calculations.

Throughout the book Katherine

Johnson is at pains to pay homage to her

teachers and mentors, to her colleagues,

friends and family and to those who broke

through the barriers alongside her.

Her life was one of hard work, integrity,

decency and dedication. It is indeed an

inspiring story of a life well lived. ★★★★★

Jenny Winder is a space writer and

broadcaster

My Remarkable Journey: A Memoir

Space Exploration

Life in the

Cosmos: From

Biosignatures to

Technosignatures

August 2021 BBC Sky at Night Magazine 95

Manasvi Lingam, Abraham ‘Avi’ Loeb

Harvard University Press

£60.95 z HB

In the past few

decades, the

search for life in

the Universe has

moved from the

somewhat niche

pursuit of a few

dedicated

scientists to a

booming area of

research. The

discovery of thousands of exoplanets,

potentially hospitable environments on

other Solar System worlds and life thriving

in what had seemed to be inhospitable

environments on Earth, have all played a

role in bringing the science of astrobiology

• the study of possible alien life in the
  Universe – into the mainstream.
  This book from University of Florida
  astrobiologist Lingam and Harvard
  professor Loeb is a magisterial review of the
  current state of this fast-moving field.
  Across almost 900 pages (plus extensive
  end matter) it explores every aspect of the
  problem you’ve ever considered – and
  probably quite a few you haven’t. After an
  introductory chapter discussing how we
  define life and the likely requirements for it
  to arise, the book divides neatly into three
  sections, looking first at the origins and
  evolution of life on Earth, then at the
  potential for life to arise in a variety of other
  environments (and how we might detect it)
  and finally at how intelligent life might give
  away its presence and perhaps spread
  across the Universe.
  This is primarily an academic textbook,
  packed with ideas, assuming a baseline
  understanding of science and not afraid to
  deploy equations. For anyone seriously
  interested in the scientific possibilities of
  extraterrestrial life, it’s the last word on
  the subject – for now at least. ★★★★★

Giles Sparrow is a science writer

and a fellow of the Royal

Astronomical Society