Ellen Stofan Quotes
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With the mission to Mars, the whole world wants to get involved. So we actually have 13 different space agencies from around the world working on the global exploration road map.
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One of the big things about space exploration is that it is as expensive as it is complicated, and you need all the countries of the world to help if you want to accomplish big goals.
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There's a huge question of whether you really need water for life.
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We're not going to get humans to Mars until at least the mid-2030s, and the world is going to change by then.
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What we expect to find, certainly in our own solar system, are probably simple single or multiple-cell forms of life. To get to intelligent life takes stability of conditions over huge, long periods of time.
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We actually look to the scientific community to kind of come back to NASA and tell us what the priorities should be. And then at NASA, we try to look within our budget and say, 'What can we accommodate, and what are the most important things for the nation?'
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I live an hour from NASA's HQ in Washington, D.C., and sitting in a jam stresses me out.
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Communication is an issue where we can improve, and if I can do anything to help, I am happy to.
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Prior to Magellan, due to the fact that we knew it was so hot on Venus, we thought that the rocks at the surface would behave more plastically, more like Silly Putty than like solid rock in the way that we think of it, like the rocks that I'm sitting on.
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The public has an incredible capacity for appreciating the wonder of our planet, our solar system, our universe.
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When we go to explore, we do it as a globe.
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A lot of my role is advocacy, and as a scientist, you're an advocate, too, because you are coming up with a theory and having to convince your fellow scientists that you're right.
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We want to make sure we get living astronauts to the surface of Mars.
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Mars missions will require up to three years in reduced gravity, so we need to make sure astronauts can not only survive but thrive as they move outward to explore this new world.
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When you look at Venus and the Earth, they formed at about the same place in the solar system. They're made of about the same materials; they're about the same size.
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Water-based life is very much an Earth-centric view, and we can push the envelope on that here in our own solar system. We have the methane seas of Titan.
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'The Martian' may be fiction, but at NASA, we are working to make it a reality.
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Every time I give a talk, I ask the audience - especially if it's kids - how many want to go to Mars. At least half raise their hands. I don't think there's going to be any shortage of volunteers.
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If you think of the Apollo capsule coming into Earth with a parachute, the Mars atmosphere is just so thin, you've got to find some way of slowing yourself down really rapidly.