Erik Conway, who is best known for his work on Merchants of Doubt (2010), used to be the in-house historian at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia and moved to become historian of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California in 2004. It is this laboratory, federally funded and managed by Caltech for NASA, that the current book focuses on. Although the book is about NASA's activities in the exploration of Mars, it is a view, as Conway says, from a specific centre responsible for ‘advocating, managing, designing, testing, and operating’ spacecraft, not from headquarters (p. 8). The book focuses on the work carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, giving a mission-by-mission view of the centre's work. The book is concerned with the evolution of engineering and management knowledge. It focuses on the managers and engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who designed and oversaw NASA's robotic missions to Mars from 1996 to 2004. Conway illuminates many engineering challenges in detail in order to demonstrate how different interests interacted and how learning passed – or failed to pass – knowledge from one spacecraft to another.

Conway sets out to treat both successful and failed missions ‘as symmetrically as possible’, a symmetry that is possible – and indeed is especially valuable – because the actors analysed failure and changed their actions explicitly as a consequence of the knowledge gained from previous missions (p. 193). Because it was not clear even at launch which spacecraft would successfully fulfil their mission and which would mysteriously disappear (prey to the ‘great galactic ghoul’), there is documentation of all the missions no matter what their outcome (p. 62).

Exploration and Engineering is not really a book about Mars science, but because scientists are constantly involved in mission design – indeed one of Conway's conclusions is that communication between the scientific teams that design missions and the engineering teams that build the machines to carry them out is crucial to a successful mission – they are present throughout the book. Conway pays attention to the interests of scientists, but, as he concludes, ‘Scientists’ desires were one driver of Mars exploration strategy, but not the only one’ (p. 330). Ironically, as Conway mentions, the public enthusiasm for Mars, which makes possible exploration now, culminates in enthusiasm for human habitation. So this enthusiasm will ultimately pit scientists interested in a pristine planet to study against the public that funds their work.

Conway draws some tentative conclusions about the important role of novelty in publicly funded science programmes and how the drive for novelty might result in a bias. In this context, he describes the successful landing of missions like the Mars Exploration Rover (which included the Spirit and Opportunity rovers) as ‘technological spectacles’ that recruit public enthusiasm (p. 334). Although he does not go into great detail, he does show how the importance of novelty and public support heavily influenced the design of spacecraft and the goals of space exploration missions.

The book does not draw many bigger lessons; but there is much interesting detail and commentary throughout from which many could be drawn with more force. For example, the story that Conway tells gives the reader much food for thought about the background to big engineering decisions – in this case, NASA's space exploration programme interacted with NASA's human space exploration programme (an interaction that is one of the most important themes of Conway's study), as well as with politics, economics, foreign relations (largely the Cold War's aftermath, and the advantage of splitting budgets across many countries), NASA's growing aversion to risk especially in the case of Mars exploration, and advocacy by enthusiasts (such as those organized in the Planetary Society).

Important to this book is the relationship between cutting-edge science and technological innovation (the call for the Mars Observer required cutting-edge science but no new technology). Indeed, key to Conway's account is explication of the better–faster–cheaper rationale that characterized NASA's work in the last decade of the twentieth century. Yet many things particular to space flight worked against it. The discussion brings out many aspects of engineering work that could have been emphasized more: that often science made possible by new technology is more appealing to selectors; the heritage argument, that reusing previously tested, off-the-shelf equipment can be cost-saving whereas in reality specific applications required such specific aspects to be redesigned that the savings were negligible; the importance of subsystems being designed together; the difference between ‘industrial’ methods of manufacturing and highly specific methods like those used at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory; the changing of procedures – generally managerial – in the hopes of altering outcomes; that priorities set by politics often have perverse engineering consequences, such as the fact that NASA could not get a small amount of money to do engineering development on Earth but could get a much larger amount to do the same work in space or that the public can demand unaffordable goals, such as sample return from Mars; the necessity of ‘social engineering’ by engineers to make complex engineering projects successful; and the cost and desirability of expertise.

The book raises several important topics for further research: is it possible, or in what situations is it possible, to manufacture general solutions to problems that provide a demonstrable advantage over designing a new machine from scratch? Where will a focus on cost take us as far as engineering design is concerned? Is it really possible to educate the engineers of contractors rather than hire experienced engineers? To what extent can the sort of engineering knowledge that makes missions successful be formalized? A detailed book, Exploration and Engineering is a necessary read for anyone who wants to know about how space exploration becomes possible, useful to those studying the evolution and transmission of engineering knowledge, but likely slow going for more general readers.