Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Our country... invests a tiny fraction of 1 percent in NASA, and this is what's so amazing to me, is with that small investment, we do so much for the country.
I look forward to working with the NASA team to help enable new discoveries in our quest to understand our home planet and unravel the mysteries of the universe.
InSight will get to the 'core' of the nature of the interior and structure of Mars, well below the observations we've been able to make from orbit or the surface.
The surface of Mars is bathed in ultraviolet light, bathed in radiation. Mars's magnetic field is essentially gone, so the surface of Mars is essentially sterilized.
We don't know how many planets we're going to have to examine before we find life, and not finding it on 10 or 100 doesn't mean it's not there. This may be very tricky.
There is no stronger case for the motivational power of real science than the discoveries that come from the Hubble Space Telescope as it unravels the mysteries of the universe.
We're being very careful that we don't send a spacecraft to Mars with the intention of detecting Martian life - and find out that we detected the Earth life that we took with us.
Are we alone? Many, many people on planet Earth want to know. We are on the cusp of being able to answer that question... because of the investments we're making in space technology.
I don't particularly want to jump out of an airplane with a parachute if I don't have to. I don't want to go bungee jumping. I like adventure with a real purpose that I can buy into.
A lot of people get home from work and sink into a good chair, the place in their life where they feel most comfortable. I get that comfort in space, the place where I most feel like I belong.
One of the things that happens in space is that there is a fluid shift. You get a lot of extra pressure, and it fills your sinuses, and the horseradish is a miracle worker for cleaning that out.
The Hubble Space Telescope is more than remarkable. It has answered just so many of those fundamental questions that people have been asking about the cosmos since people were able to ask questions.
I think that space exploration as a broad activity is the most important things that humans can do. I've always found it fascinating, interesting, compelling, and I have a drive to go out into space.
As soon as I could ride a bike... I was always riding over to the Museum of Science and Industry to explore. It's where I first began to develop a fascination with machines and scientific principles.
The team at the Space Telescope Science Institute has a demonstrated record of meeting the high-performance challenges of operating the Hubble Space Telescope and preparing for the James Webb Space Telescope.
The '60s were a remarkable time because several things were happening at once. Men were leaving planet Earth, kids were breaking into the television age, and I was able to see Neil Armstrong walking on the moon.
I believe that the future of humans, and the future of Earth, depends on space exploration. That's not a French problem, or a problem for Alabama: it's a planet-wide problem. International cooperation is crucial.
At the age of six, I declared that I wanted to be an astronaut. My mother thought that was just fine, as it would encourage me to learn science, and besides, there really was no chance I would ever actually become an astronaut.
The Hubble Space Telescope, which was designed for extreme servicing, you know, we can fix everything. And the James Webb Space Telescope, where we can fix nothing. It has to work the first time. And it's a very complicated telescope.
Our journey in going beyond our home planet is a human endeavor, and in the greatest tradition of exploration, past, present, and future spacefarers will continue to be enduring catalysts for inspiration in our quest to unravel the mysteries of the universe.
I was not really scared on my spacewalks. We practice so much and need to stay so focused that it has a calming effect on me. I do a kind of visualization and meditation in the airlock prior to going outside, to guide my first activities once I get out in space.
Here we were, the only seven humans in space, repairing a telescope whose only purpose is to enrich the minds of people on planet Earth and increase our understanding of the workings of the universe. I can think of no better peaceful use of space for all humankind.
Growing up in Highland Park, in high school, I had some very influential teachers: I had a math teacher who taught calculus that helped me learn to be in love with mathematics; I had a chemistry teacher who inspired us to work what was in the class and to go beyond.
There's a perspective that I've gained as an astronaut that I didn't get from my science activities. In my science activities, I learned by the seat of my pants. Spending 17 years as an astronaut, I learned the NASA formalism of systems engineering as if my life depended on it. Literally.
Because of Hubble and other telescopes, we've now discovered that there are probably planets around every star, or virtually every star. There are solar systems around most stars. And the fact that we're here on a planet, Earth, means that it's likely there's lots of other Earths out there.
The James Webb Space Telescope was specifically designed to see the first stars and galaxies that were formed in the universe. So we're gonna see the snapshot of when stars started. When galaxies started. The very first moments of the universe. And my bet? There's gonna be some big surprises.
When I grew up on the south side of Chicago, it was kind of a rough neighborhood, and when my parents saw the prospect of my older sister going to middle school, high school, they decided that we would move to the north side of Chicago, Highland Park, and for me, that was a whole new ballgame.
I grew up on the south side of Chicago in the 1960s, and I think there was a synchronicity of events that inspired me to be an astronaut, and, of course, the backdrop is nothing less than Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. That was a time in our nation where we aspired to great things, and we achieved them.
The most striking thing to me about human space flight and my own personal experience is that I've seen dramatic changes on Earth. We humans are rapidly changing the planet. I've watched Amazonia as the rainforest has been cut down. That's something I've seen out the window. I'm very worried about that.
Here on Earth, we're exposed to asteroids hitting the Earth, eventual changes in the Sun, changes in the Earth's climate, things we're doing to the Earth's climate. If we want to survive, we need to become a multi-planet species. That's further down the road, but the first wave is going to be the explorers.
When I first went to Hubble, as an astronomer and as a scientist, it was a dream come true. And as an astronaut, the Hubble missions are premiere missions because Hubble is so important to science, so important to humanity, that it's just a very special event. But as an astronomer, it was sort of the holy grail of missions.
All indications are that three and a half billion years ago, Mars looked like Earth. It had lakes. It had rivers. It had river deltas. It had snow-capped peaks and puffy clouds and blue sky. Three and a half billion years ago, it was a happening place. The same time on Earth, that's when life started. So did life start on Mars?
When I grew up as a kid, we didn't know there were any other planets outside of our own solar system. It was widely speculated that planet formation was an incredibly rare event and that it's possible that other planets just don't exist in our galaxy, and it's just this special situation where we happen to have planets around our sun.