- Thank you.
I wanted to give you--
You're gonna get a much larger presentation
later today from Mike Seablom--
[clears throat] Excuse me.
Um, who's gonna be talking in, uh...
Um, who's gonna be talking more broadly about
the specifics of our science program,
so I wanted to sort of just lay a much broader discussion
of what it is we're trying to do at NASA
and how technology is so critical to accomplishing that.
These are the five areas of science that we cover at NASA,
which you're probably very familiar with.
First of all, studying the sun,
which has such huge fundamental challenges
in the fact that the bulk of what we do
in terms of heliophysics is really trying to monitor the sun
and provide early warning
of solar flares or coronal mass ejections
that could be headed towards the earth.
In terms of a fundamental understanding
of how the sun works,
we're actually still pretty far from that,
which is exciting from a scientific point of view,
because there's so much work to be done
in terms of understanding the sun
and in terms of sending humans out
beyond the earth's magnetic field,
where they're subjected to radiation from solar storms.
It's a critical area in terms of being able to improve
our ability to forecast and to understand the environment
outside of the earth's magnetic field
as we send humans out into areas that are much more dangerous.
In terms of astrophysics, I know David touched on this,
but when I go out and talk to schoolkids,
I always tell them they all need
to become planetary scientists like me.
Of course, I'm just trying to recruit small children,
but on the other hand, you know, when you consider
the fact that 30 years ago, when I was in school,
when many of you were in school,
you know, we had nine planets.
We now have thousands of planets,
largely due to the Kepler space telescope.
But when you consider what we're gonna--
what's gonna happen over the next three to four years
with the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite,
which we estimate will detect one habitable planet a month,
in terms of the James Webb Space Telescope,
which will look at the atmospheres
of some of those planets around other stars.
The ability of scientists to not just study
the planets of this solar system,
but to study planets in other solar systems
is increasingly amazing to me,
but in terms of scientifically, it's a huge growing field.
It's gonna change the way we look at
how planetary systems form.
It already is.
It's gonna change the way we look at planetary climates
and how they change over time,
and indeed just the whole issue of how hard it is
to get a habitable planet,
is something that, in the next 10-15 years,
is actually within our grasp,
and this is incredibly exciting,
and that's why I encourage kids to go into it,
not just because I think we should
have more planetary scientists.
When we talk as we do at NASA a lot these days
about sending humans to Mars,
because that really is our overriding goal,
in terms of moving humans out beyond low Earth orbit
where we have been for so long so successfully,
moving humans out first to the vicinity of the moon
and then on to Mars within the next 20 years,
is something that NASA is really using
as an overarching, driving goal.
And it actually fits into the science that we do
because, getting back to those extrasolar planets,
thinking about habitability,
trying to understand how ubiquitous life is
in the universe starts in our own solar system.
So when we say we want to send humans to Mars,
a large part of that is
because we need humans on the surface of Mars,
doing science, looking at a lot of rocks,
because that's what it's gonna take to actually determine
did life evolve on Mars?
What are the characteristics of that life?
And how can we use that information
to understand life better here on this planet?
But also then think about those thousands of planets
that exist that Kepler has found
but actually in reality it's billions of planets out there
in our galaxy, in the universe.
In terms of how likely is it that there is life,
uh, which we think is highly likely,
but then getting to that point of thinking about complex life--
how likely is complex life beyond our own solar system?
So Mars is really key to answering that question.
The conditions on Mars were very similar to those
on the early Earth, um, so life should have evolved there.
If it didn't, that's also scientifically interesting.
Not--not as exciting, but still scientifically interesting,
and again has something to tell us about the likelihood
of habitability beyond our own solar system.
So...getting to Mars,
which a lot of people say,
"Oh, we can do that in two or three years,"
I strongly believe that we need to keep doing the research
that we're doing on the International Space Station
every day to get humans ready to go to Mars.
We have made huge progress in trying to keep humans healthy
in space in terms of bone density, loss,
in terms of muscle wasting.
There's a lot of the health factors
that we have found mitigations for
that work pretty well.
There's others that we still have work left to do on.
For example, the intercranial pressure rise,
reducing the peripheral vision of some of the astronauts
is still something we need to do more research on.
There's still a lot with isolation,
mental health research, with research on...
Immune system function, research on nutrition,
and of course then how that plays into
some of the other side effects from--micro-gravity effects
is still something we have work left to do.
So we think it's really critical to have the ISS
as a platform at least through 2024
to then get ready to move out to what will be the--
basically the test habitat for the vehicle
that will take us to Mars
where humans can survive for one-plus year.
Probably the chief technology driver in that area
is really the life support systems.
Scrubbing CO2 out of the atmosphere on the space station,
having a reliable way to process urine,
you know, these are small things to us,
but, you know, just think about going to Mars
with six people and a broken toilet.
You know, it doesn't really fly, so to speak.
So it goes all the way from those mundane systems on the ISS
to the really important systems,
removing CO2 and producing oxygen,
that have to work reliably,
and so that's a whole technology area that I think
is really interesting, pushing for new technologies
that give you a whole new system,
maybe a more efficient system,
versus reliability, which is really critical,
so that research that we're doing every day on the ISS,
especially focused around the life support systems,
to then get us ready to move humans out
to the lunar vicinity and then on to Mars
within the next 15 years.
It is an exciting area of research.
Planetary, we're looking forward
to the Juno encounter this summer
with Jupiter,
and then OSIRIS-REx launching in September,
so it's gonna be a busy year in Planetary
in terms of new missions.
And, of course, we're also somewhat
in mourning-- well, at least I am.
I'm a member of the Cassini Radar Team,
which has been studying Saturn so amazingly for over a decade.
Cassini will actually end its mission next year
when we crash the spacecraft into Saturn.
But an amazing legacy of findings,
and again, back to the life issue in terms of
looking at the moons of Saturn
from the subsurface ocean of Enceladus
to the geysers-- or, sorry, the lakes on Titan.
And intriguing environments for studying life.
And then of course, there's the outer solar system
beyond Saturn-- Uranus, Neptune--
where we really have so much still left to learn.
So lots of excitement in Planetary,
and I left out Europa, which, of course,
we're planning a mission to Europa right now.
And again the subsurface ocean on Europa
an extremely likely target for potential habitability
and we'd like to go find out,
so we've selected the instruments
for a Europa mission that will fly hopefully
in the early 2020s
and we're right now studying a lander to accompany--
actually, it probably won't accompany; it would fly later--
a lander to actually get down on the surface of Europa
and try to analyze its surface.
And then of course the most important planet,
and that's our own, where we have 19 missions
right now studying this planet,
trying to understand climate change,
but increasingly over the next decade, we're gonna see
how can we use space-based data of this planet to help us
with climate--mitigating climate change effects?
Because frankly, at this point, we're walking into
higher sea levels, increased levels of storms,
effects on agriculture around the globe,
you know, an increasing number of effects
that again over the next 10-15 years,
no matter what we do about our carbon emissions,
are gonna increasingly become part of our lives,
and space-based data is really poised to help us
with so many of those effects of climate change
that we're gonna be seeing happening.
And of course, the ongoing role of making sure
we have the best models that we do
and that we're providing the best information to show
how the planet is changing.
So that's a broad overview of science,
and I know Mike's gonna talk a lot more later
about how we're--how we're looking at technology
in these areas.
And most of you in this room probably know
all that science that I was just talking about.
We get our priorities through
the National Academy of Sciences,
which is looking at the overall--
they look at each of these different areas of science
that you see in each of these little stovepiped areas up here,
and set the priorities,
so the science community is the one who comes forward
and says, "Here are the big missions you should do,
because these are the big measurements we need
in order to really move science forward
in any of these five areas,"
so we really do rely on the Academy
to set the science priorities for the coming decade.
And the earth science decadal has just begun
a few months ago,
and the astrophysics decadal will be the next one
to queue up in a few years,
so those are a constant ongoing process
that really helps us decide what's the important thing
to do next.
So I've got about four minutes left,
so if you guys have any questions
about science priorities, I'd be happy to answer.
[man speaking indistinctly]
I know.
No questions. [man replying indistinctly]
Okay.
- Daryl Schuck from Honeywell.
I understand that you referred to the ISS
as a platform for building and establishing
space mitigation factors.
How do you reconcile the issue of
perhaps the approach taken on ISS right now...
[indistinct]
I'm sure you're aware of some of the approaches on ISS
may not work in a deep space mission.
What can you say about that as far as...
[indistinct]
- Right, and--and, um--you know, that's the kind of thing
that makes us feel that this next step
of a deep space habitat out in the vicinity of the moon
is--is important, and why we need to get moving on it,
and--and so it's why we're-- you're hearing NASA talking
a lot about it, because the ISS is a great platform
for really testing out certain technologies,
but it's not the same as a deep space habitat
that's gonna be much smaller.
It's gonna have to have much more--as I was saying--
much more reliable systems,
it's gonna be smaller, different masks,
different power requirements, so...
Doing Powerpoints of it, doing studies, is one thing,
but we need to go try it
and we need to put it out in deep space
and we need to-- we need to work on it.
You know, and we need to have humans on it
breathing and doing all the things that humans do
to make sure it's a reliable system
before we actually send it
on that eight months to Mars, eight months back.
You need to really have a shakedown of that system
to make sure it's reliable.
And that's why we think the deep space habitat
is so incredibly important.
That's why the BAA--the Broad Area Announcement--went out.
And we're happy to be working with multiple partners
on looking at what that deep space habitat should look like.
My aim is that we're never losing focus,
that what that is is not a space station around the moon.
It is the test vehicle for the vehicle
that will get humans to Mars,
and so I think--and that's-- those are two different things
and so we need to make really sure what is at the top of
what the requirements for that are.
Are we really driving that system in that direction?
Because to me that's the criticality.
It's not a space station at the moon.
It's practicing to go to Mars.
But that being said,
we can still push how we use the ISS every day
as far as it can go as a system in terms of saying
how can we really use this unique platform
as much as we can to get ready to go to Mars?