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| boringmars |
Mars is the hottest topic in the space science world these days, with new rovers, orbiters, and landers finding out new and exciting things about the Red Planet with startling regularity. Multiple manned missions are already in their earliest stages, but not everyone is on board with the idea of sending humans to our most tempting planetary neighbor.
In a new interview with BBC, former NASA astronaut and Apollo 8 lunar module pilot Bill Anders weighed in on the push to get mankind to Mars, and he’s not exactly thrilled with the whole thing.
Anders, now 85 years old, says that there’s not much reason to send humans to Mars, especially when unmanned missions seem to be doing great work on their own and for much less investment. The former NASA astronaut, who notes that he’s a “big supporter” of the unmanned Mars efforts, calls manned Mars missions “almost ridiculous.”
“What’s the imperative? What’s pushing us to go to Mars?” Anders asked during the interview. “I don’t think the public is that interested.”
Along with his criticisms of ongoing manned Mars mission efforts, Anders had some particularly harsh words for the current state of NASA itself.
“NASA couldn’t get to the Moon today. They’re so ossified,” Anders told the BBC. “NASA has turned into a jobs program… many of the centers are mainly interested in keeping busy and you don’t see the public support other than they get the workers their pay and their congressmen get re-elected.”
Yikes!
Anders isn’t necessarily wrong about a couple of his points, but it’s worth noting that NASA has had continued budget struggles for some time, and the inability to secure funding for new, more exciting advancements has certainly hampered its ability to repeatedly wow the public with groundbreaking feats. In any case, manned missions to Mars are less a question of “if” and more a question of “when.”
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Cosmic Holiday Wreath
This Hubble image shows RS Puppis, a type of variable star known as a Cepheid variable. As variable stars go, Cepheids have comparatively long periods — RS Puppis, for example, varies in brightness by almost a factor of five every 40 or so days. RS Puppis is unusual; this variable star is shrouded by thick, dark clouds of dust enabling a phenomenon known as a light echo to be shown with stunning clarity. These Hubble observations show the ethereal object embedded in its dusty environment, set against a dark sky filled with background galaxies.
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Robot at Work
This set of images shows NASA's InSight lander deploying its first instrument onto the surface of Mars, completing a major mission milestone. InSight's robotic arm is white, with a black, handlike grapple at the end. The grapple is holding onto the copper-colored seismometer. The color-calibrated image was taken on Dec. 19, 2018, around dusk on Mars, with InSight's Instrument Deployment Camera (IDC), which is on the lander's robotic arm.
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The Great Carina Nebula
A jewel of the southern sky, the Great Carina Nebula, also known as NGC 3372, spans over 300 light-years, one of our galaxy's largest star forming regions. Like the smaller, more northerly Great Orion Nebula, the Carina Nebula is easily visible to the unaided eye, though at a distance of 7,500 light-years it is some 5 times farther away. This gorgeous telescopic close-up reveals remarkable details of the region's central glowing filaments of interstellar gas and obscuring cosmic dust clouds. The field of view is over 50 light-years across. The Carina Nebula is home to young, extremely massive stars, including the stars of open cluster Trumpler 14 (above and left of center) and the still enigmatic variable Eta Carinae, a star with well over 100 times the mass of the Sun. Eta Carinae is the brightest star, centered here just below the dusty Keyhole Nebula (NGC 3324). While Eta Carinae itself maybe on the verge of a supernova explosion, X-ray images indicate that the Great Carina Nebula has been a veritable supernova factory.
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