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Astronauts putting their home work to bridge this goal of 35 million miles between earth and miles. by to 40 we might be ready to send human explorers there. that is many, many small steps and this is trying to build up capabilities for survival and existing on the surface using resources that is already there. for anyone just tuning this in, this is a very expensive mission. there is a lot riding on it. can you tell us what this means for the future of mars exploration? and planetary exploration? this is two and a half billion dollars. ....
Next big step in mars exploration which is bringing samples back from the red planet. learning about possible life there and paving the way for human explorers. gregg: derek, when tom and i were covering yesterday, we got e-mails from people saying billions spent on this is a waste. there are no martians on mars. that is not the point. the point is we re not looking for existing life there but the conditions that may have existed for organic life at one time? yes. what nasa is doing here is doing what is called chasing the water. for the idea of trying to figure out whether or not there ever was life on mars or if there could still be life on mars the thing to do is look for places where there is evidence of environments that were con dus sieve to the development of life conducive. they re looking for organic compounds that might indicate such an environment. this is done step by step so that nasa scientists can be very, very careful about what results they report finding. gregg: t ....
Nasa put together 17 individual post of photographs to show us the one we have on screen. what does it tell you, tom? what questions does it raise? it is a wonder rouse panorama, join. much on student has been on the eight years after landing in 2004. it is embarking on another two year traverse across the crater looking for inhabitable climates in the mars s history, looking for water-baring rocks in particular. this image strikes our imagination. it inspires us to want to put human explorers there to follow up the biological questions raised by these rovers. jon: walter, says reminds you of vistas of the american southwest. own letter problem hard to get to, isn t it? very hard to get to but it is a picture that the public can identify with and actually makes the american southwest pretty much like a paradise. personalnally i m much more impressed with the fact that ....
Of science exploration is what the u.s. excels at. fills people with awe and wonder and inspiration when we uncover new secrets of the origins of life on mars for example. and then human explorers i hope will one day be able to follow up these robotic discoveries and get to the rub of these questions. is there life there now? did life exist there in the past? that would really answer the question are we alone? that is fundamental. i think that is what we should be pursuing and human explorers have a role in that. you spent a lot of time in the franklin institute looking up at mars. what would you like this probe to answer, this explorer? as tom said the question we re trying to figure out were conditions ripe on mars for life in the past. and as scott said, could there be any life in the future? will we find anything now, actually? these are all really important questions because the big question of all this astronomical research is the very big one ....
Tom jones, former nasa astronaut, fox news contributor and author of sky walking , an astronaut s memoir. thank you for joining us. hi patty. patti ann: as we showed you president obama was once a supporter of a nasa mission, but his new budget would cancel this joint u.s.-european robotic mars mission both in 2016 and 2018. scientists are described as stunned and depressed. what s your reaction? oh, i think it s exactly the wrong tack to be taking. nasa has been the leader in mars we re the only country that s sent spacecraft to mars and here we re pulling out of exploration and returning samples back here, both to learn about the science of mars and also to prepare the way for the human explorers that the president mentioned patti ann: and in 2018, mars makes its closest pass to earth, in a 15-year cycle, and scientists don t want to ....