Martian Summer: My Ninety Days with Interplanetary Pioneers, Temperamental Robots, and NASA's Phoenix Mars Mission

In the summer of 2008, Andrew Kessler, the luckiest fanboy in fandom, lived his space dream, spending three months in NASA's mission control with one hundred thirty of the world's best planetary scientists and engineers as they explored the north pole of Mars. This story is a human drama about modern-day pioneers battling NASA politics, temperamental robots, and the bizarre world of daily life in mission control.

The Phoenix Mars mission was the first man-made probe ever sent to the Martian arctic. The program's goal was to find out how climate change can turn a warm, wet planet (read: Earth) into a cold, barren desert (read: Mars). Along the way, Phoenix discovered a giant frozen ocean trapped beneath the north pole of Mars, exotic food for aliens and liquid water, and laid the foundation for NASA's current exploration of Mars using the Curiosity rover.

This is not science fiction. It is fact. Not bad for a summer holiday.