"From Jars to the Stars also describes the effort behind Ball's first spacecraft, the Orbiting Solar Observatory launched in 1962. The Ball orbiter prepares the ground for Deep Impact, showing readers how much--and how little--changed across four decades of American space exploration. From Jars to the Stars goes on to show how Ball Aerospace evolved into an organization capable of building a comet hunter. The story pays special mind to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the world leader in interplanetary space exploration and Ball's partner on the mission. The Deep Impact team nearly faltered: NASA was twice on the verge of scrapping the mission as technical and money problems mounted. But against the odds, and with a telescope that came up blurry in space, Deep Impact met its mark. The surviving flyby spacecraft sent home images and data of an explosion that shed new light on comets, which, scientists believe, are a key to understanding how the solar system evolved and where we came from. The book shows vividly that robotic space missions are indeed manned: the people just happen to stay on the ground." --