The Orbital Perspective An Astronaut’s View

Colonel Ron Garan John Blake Publishing £16.99 HB

The International Space Station is a genuine 21st century icon – the most complex building ever constructed. But has it been useful? In The Orbital Perspective astronaut Ron Garan refers to the many benefits accruing from the ISS, though sadly neglects to list them.

After 15 years of continuous living in space, the scientific returns have arguably been scanty – at least so far. The solid value has been the engineering experience gained in building and operating it, which should stand us well for exploring the Solar System further. But that is not all, Garan argues: completing the ISS also demanded the overcoming of very real cultural differences between its partners in favour of a more transcendent outlook he terms ‘the orbital perspective’. This way of thinking can be applied to supposedly insoluble problems across spaceship Earth – environmental degradation, poverty and war. In a blend of astronaut memoir and social call to arms, Garan details his efforts to do just this since his most recent return to Earth in 2011.

The book is at its strongest as it recounts the wary manner in which the US and Russia began their cooperation in space in the early 1990s. He argues that the whole world is experiencing a similar situation at the moment, as different cultures are connected by technology. Such connectivity can be made ‘win-win’, but it will require the ‘orbital perspective’ of the title. The reader may or may not find the argument convincing, but amid grim daily headlines its sheer optimism makes the book worth a look. SEAN BLAIR writes for the European Space Agency website

It’s a challenge, after all this time, to find a new approach to writing about the Hubble Space Telescope. One need only take a brief glance at the astronomy section of a local bookshop to see how much publishers and authors have already mined NASA’s apparently indefatigable source of stunning space imagery and scientific breakthroughs. So space historians DeVorkin and Smith are to be commended on the new and intriguing angle taken in The Hubble Cosmos.

Fittingly for a publication celebrating Hubble’s quarter-century in space, they focus on 25 key moments, ranging from landmark discoveries to turning points in the telescope’s own story. Each selfcontained chapter is interspersed with ‘Hubble All Stars’ – a selection of the telescope’s most impressive pictures curated by National Geographic’s own peerless picture editors.

More than the beautiful visuals, however, it’s the historians’ perspectives – and the unique choices this inspires in the coverage of ‘key moments’ – that make this book stand out; such as the artistic impact of images such as the famous 1995 Pillars of Creation, or the media’s obsession with Hubble’s ups and downs. The book is full of little gems like this, alongside fresh looks at Hubble’s scientific contributions to fields such as the search for exoplanets and measurement of the Universe. All in all, you may pick it up for the pictures, but will probably end up reading from cover to cover.

GILES SPARROW is a science writer and fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society