Why as a species do we explore? Because we have to. I think we explore because
it's in our bones. The reason I'm a planetary scientist is this idea of
exploring new worlds. Of exploring places that, you know, no humans ever gone before.
Everything I've done is something for the first time. I'm not interested in
doing things for the second time. I think it was, it was the excitement of doing
something that hadn't been done before that got me involved. One of the things
that makes humans feel alive is the process of exploration and discovery and
it's something that we start out with when we're, when we're infants. My interest
in space started when I was about, I think nine years of age. I had just
turned nine years old. When I was about 13 years old. The question isn't you
know, "What drives us to do this?" We're already been driven to do it since
all of human history. I thought, "There's nothing left to explore what am I going to
do?" and now I found something. Well planetary science has got open vistas. We
are cosmic detectives. We go back in time. We're still exploring, we're always
pushing these boundaries. We've got people out there building robots that
are going to explore the farthest reaches of the solar system. We're getting closer
and closer to understanding how we got here. And by studying our planets we can
understand where to go next.
It really is amazing how far that we've come.
I really feel incredibly blessed to have grown up at a time when the solar system
was being unveiled. Grand Tour turned out to be a whopping success. Voyager is
probably the greatest epic of planetary exploration ever. For me personally it
has to be Viking. New Horizons. Mariner 9. Juno. Grail. The Mars Science Laboratory.
MESSENGER. The great Galileo mission and later with the Cassini mission.
Landing humans on the moon. Just to have had the privilege to be part of some of
these missions for me, it's just been incredible. Those discoveries have been
there, those are things that have been going on for billions of years
but we as a human race are just now discovering them. Well it really captures
the, you know, imagination of the public as well as what keeps the scientists
excited frankly is a, is the beautiful images. To actually see those first
images coming back scan line by scan line by scan line. And seeing those
numbers on the screen, knowing that they're coming from Mars, was absolutely
incredible. A spectator sport watching these moons come
close and seeing what the heck we were going to see. People love being amazed, they
love being so awestruck that their mouths hang open. It was one of the most
amazing things ever, that I've ever experienced.
Now does that mean that we've got it all figured out now after 50 years? Far from
it. We're just beginning. If we're gonna move
out, where do we go? There's so many places, I mean how can you pick one?
I would love to see us explore the ocean on Europa. I want to see humans go to
Mars. If we can bring back pristine samples from small bodies — asteroids,
comets — that would be very telling. What are the materials that formed the solar
system? What did it look like originally? I want to know if life exists in our
solar system. Does life exist elsewhere? That is a fundamental question I'd like
that answer to. Hey, if it started here, why not there?
I mean how incredible would that be if you found life on another planet? That's
just completely revolutionary, it's mind-blowing. How many exoplanets might
there be? What makes earth so unique? Was Mars a
habitable environment? These are all the kinds of questions that, you know, when
you're a little kid you kind of think in bed, "Who are we? Are we alone? And where
are we going?" And the more we move out, the more we'll discover. The more we learn
the more fascinating things, they become. Because as long as human beings are
around, we are going to want to keep going out into
that endless universe and find out what's there and every time we make a
new discovery that bubble rises a little bit and that thrill is always there.