Provides a comprehensive review in two parts of the exploration of the Solar System, focusing on the technology of the robotic space probes that made it possible, including missions which - for a variety of reasons – were never completed.

Paolo Ulivi provides a well-paced, rapidly moving, balanced, even-handed account of lunar exploration as a popular history. He covers the unmanned programmes, e.g. Ranger, and other American probes in the late ‘50s and in the later chapters he looks at recent lunar exploration and future plans for the same. It’s a book that will be perfect for an enthusiast or someone coming to the story for the first time, as it does not include excessive technical depth. Uniquely drawing on recently declassified documents, detail of Chinese lunar exploration projects is provided, as well as nuclear lunar weapons of the ‘50s developed by the super powers, Soviet Russia and the United States.