Today, Mars is a frigid planet with a harsh environment that leaves scientists trying to figure out why it has been losing water, as well as its atmosphere.
Why isn't Mars a nice place for human life now? At one time, a space suit wouldn't have been necessary." If you were a microbe, you could have survived in that water. "You could have put a cup in the water and had a nice drink. "Mars had an environment, some billions of years ago, that could have supported life," he explained. John Grunsfeld, a former astronaut and associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said today that Mars has turned out to be a much more complicated planet than previously thought. But before that happens, the space agency plans to send at least one more rover and more orbiters to lead the way. NASA hopes to send humans to Mars in the 2030s. Finding that there are large amounts of water on Mars is the one find that's changed our way of thinking about human exploration of Mars." "Finding water is like finding gold," said Connolly. "The robotic missions on Mars are helping us to handle these big questions," said Connolly.ĭuring a news conference at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington today, Connolly added that Curiosity's discovery of evidence of ancient water flows as well as water in the Martian soil now is the most exciting find NASA has made yet. He added that sending humans to Mars largely depends on the information that robotic rovers and the Mars orbiters send back about the planet's geology, mineral makeup, water reserves and atmosphere. Without these robots doing this work, it would be a very risky endeavor getting to Mars." They are our eyes, our feet, our hands on the ground that inform us before we get there. "The robots we put down on Mars are our avatars right now. "There's a relationship between human and robotic science exploration right now," said John Connolly, NASA's acting chief exploration scientist.
The panoramic camera on NASA's Mars rover Spirit, which was abandoned in 2010, took the hundreds of images that were combined into this 360-degree view of the Martian Husband Hill Summit.Īnd for the last year and a half, Opportunity has been joined by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity in the exploration of Mars' geology and the hunt for evidence that there is or ever was life on the Red Planet. Opportunity, though, is still going strong after 10 long, grueling years on Mars.
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