Seeing Like a Rover: How Robots, Teams, and Images Craft Knowledge of Mars - Hardcover

Vertesi, Janet

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 022615596X ISBN 13: 9780226155968

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2015

Synopsis

In the years since the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit and Opportunity first began transmitting images from the surface of Mars, we have become familiar with the harsh, rocky, rusty-red Martian landscape. But those images are much less straightforward than they may seem to a layperson: each one is the result of a complicated set of decisions and processes involving the large team behind the Rovers.

With Seeing Like a Rover, Janet Vertesi takes us behind the scenes to reveal the work that goes into creating our knowledge of Mars. Every photograph that the Rovers take, she shows, must be processed, manipulated, and interpreted—and all that comes after team members negotiate with each other about what they should even be taking photographs of in the first place. Vertesi’s account of the inspiringly successful Rover project reveals science in action, a world where digital processing uncovers scientific truths, where images are used to craft consensus, and where team members develop an uncanny intimacy with the sensory apparatus of a robot that is millions of miles away. Ultimately, Vertesi shows, every image taken by the Mars Rovers is not merely a picture of Mars—it’s a portrait of the whole Rover team, as well.

About this title

About the Author

Janet Vertesi is associate professor of sociology at Princeton University. She is the author of Seeing Like a Rover: How Robots, Teams, and Images Craft Knowledge of Mars, also published by the University of Chicago Press, and coeditor of Representation in Scientific Practice Revisited and digitalSTS.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 022615596X
• ISBN 13: 9780226155968
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304