Ellen Stofan
Ellen Stofan
Ellen Renee Stofanis the Chief Scientist of NASA and serves as principal advisor to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden on the agency’s science programs, planning and investments. Previously, she served as vice president of Proxemy Research in Laytonsville, Maryland, and as an honorary professor in the Earth sciences department at the University College London...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth24 February 1961
CountryUnited States of America
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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 have to ask, 'How can we break a huge challenge like sending humans to Mars into a series of doable, affordable steps? How can we break that problem down into chunks in order to keep making progress?'
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Humans can actually read a landscape, go through a lot of rocks - crack them open, throw them, pick up the next one. Rovers are great - they do amazing science - but it is a lot more tedious process; they go much less far than a human can cover in a day.
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I grew up in this business... A lot of my life has been centered around this question about how NASA is helping us to understand our own home planet... and to understand our place in the universe.
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Mars was this water-based planet, and we know there was stable water on the surface for a long time, which is critical for life having a chance to develop.
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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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I always like to say just think you were a doctor with only one patient. You might understand how that person gets sick, how they get better, but you understand nothing about the progression of disease or how humans in general get ill. Now take an Earth scientist: you only have one planet to study.
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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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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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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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To avoid congestion, I get up at 5:10, grab a slice of raisin toast, and leave the house at 6 A.M. My husband, Tim Dunn, who works for an environmental agency, is still asleep when I slip out, and I find that rather annoying.
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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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Being able to have a laboratory on Mars, being able to have some sort of sustained human presence on Mars in the future, I think, is critically important for science.
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As a card-carrying space nerd and NASA's chief scientist, I love space movies, from 'Star Trek' to 'Star Wars' to my all-time favorite - 'The Dish', an Australian comedy that celebrates that first moment when Neil Armstrong stepped down onto the surface of our moon.