The past 50 years have brought forward a unique capability to conduct research and expand scientific knowledge of the Solar System through the use of radar to conduct planetary astronomy. This technology involves the aiming of a carefully controlled radio signal at a planet (or some other Solar System target, such as a planetary satellite, asteroid, or a ring system), detecting its echo, and analyzing the information that the echo carries.

This capability has contributed to the scientific knowledge of the Solar System in two fundamental ways. Most directly, planetary radars can produce images of target surfaces otherwise hidden from sight and can furnish other kinds of information about target surface features. Radar also can provide highly accurate measurements of a target's rotational and orbital motions. Such measurements are obviously invaluable for the navigation of Solar System exploratory spacecraft, a principal activity of NASA since its inception in 1958.

Andrew J. Butrica has written a comprehensive and illuminating history of this little-understood but surprisingly significant scientific discipline. Quite rigorous and systematic in its methodology, To See the Unseen explores the development of the radar astronomy specialty in the larger community of scientists.

Andrew J. Butrica received his Ph.D. in the history of science and technology at Iowa State University. He is a research historian in Franklin Park, New Jersey, specializing in the history of science. In 1990 Praeger Publishers issued his Out of Thin Air: A History of Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., 1940-1990.

About the Cover: "Big Dish Antenna," painting by Paul Arlt. Courtesy of the NASA Art Program, no. 74-HC-467.

View To See the Unseen: A History of Planetary Radar Astronomy

By Andrew J. Butrica
The NASA History Series
NASA History Office, Washington, D.C., 1996

Contents:

Acknowledgments.
Introduction.
Chapter One: A Meteoric Start.
Chapter Two: Fickle Venus.
Chapter Three: Sturm und Drang.
Chapter Four: Little Science/Big Science.
Chapter Five: Normal Science.
Chapter Six: Pioneering on Venus and Mars.
Chapter Seven: Magellan.
Chapter Eight: The Outer Limits.
Chapter Nine: One Step Beyond.
Conclusion: W(h)ither Planetary Radar Astronomy?.
Planetary Radar Astronomy Publications.
A Note on Sources.
Interviews .
Technical Essay: Planetary Radar Astronomy.
Abbreviations.
Index.

About the Author:

Andrew J. Butrica, a graduate of the doctoral program in the history of science and technology at Iowa State University, is a research historian and author of numerous articles and papers on the history of electricity and electrical engineering in the United States and France and the history of science and technology in nineteenth-century France. He is the author of a corporate history, Out of Thin Air: A History of Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., 1940-1990, published by Praeger in 1990, and a co-editor of The Papers of Thomas Edison: Vol. I: The Making of an Inventor, 1847-1873, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 1989.

Prior to writing this history of planetary radar astronomy, Dr. Butrica was a research fellow with the Center for Research in the History of Science and Technology, Cite des Sciences et de l'Industrie (La Villette), Paris, thanks to a grant from the International Division of the National Science Foundation (1991-1992) and an earlier fellowship from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (1987-1988). Butrica also has undertaken public history work, including the researching, conducting, and editing of oral history interviews for chemical company and hospital histories.

Dr. Butrica has been an invited lecturer at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris), the University of Paris (Sorbonne), and Nottingham (England) University, as well as at Rutgers University, and has been a visiting scholar at the Deutsches Museum (Munich), the University of Pennsylvania, and Lehigh University. He is a member of several professional bodies, including the American Historical Association, the History of Science Society, the Society for the History of Technology (Robinson Prize Committee), the Society for French Historical Studies, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, and the Association pour l'Histoire de l'Electricite en France.

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