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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. "

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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. "

Ellen Stofan

Solar

Earth

Look

" 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. "

Ellen Stofan

House

Husband

" 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. "

" A lot of my role is advocacy, and as a scientist, you're an advocate, too, because you are coming up with a theory and having to convince your fellow scientists that you're right. "

" Prior to Magellan, due to the fact that we knew it was so hot on Venus, we thought that the rocks at the surface would behave more plastically, more like Silly Putty than like solid rock in the way that we think of it, like the rocks that I'm sitting on. "

" When we go to explore, we do it as a globe. "

Ellen Stofan

Explore

Globe

" The public has an incredible capacity for appreciating the wonder of our planet, our solar system, our universe. "

" We're going to understand that there is life on other bodies in the solar system. "

" 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. "

" We're not going to get humans to Mars until at least the mid-2030s, and the world is going to change by then. "

" 'The Martian' may be fiction, but at NASA, we are working to make it a reality. "

" I'm actually a NASA brat. My father was a rocket scientist. He started working at NASA before it was NASA in 1959. "

" As chief scientist, it's sort of my job to look at bridges between what we do and to see the connections. But when we try to understand how are planets around other stars habitable... to looking back at the Earth - how are the changes that are taking place, how are they going to affect humanity? "

" 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. "

" There's a huge question of whether you really need water for life. "

" Instead of being able to look at smaller interesting research projects, I am trying to see the links between all the research NASA does. For me, that's extremely fun because I get to go play and learn about areas of science that I know nothing about. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" We like to talk about pioneering Mars rather than just exploring Mars, because once we get to Mars, we will set up some sort of permanent presence. "

" You see countries like India really investing in their space program because they see it as inspirational and good for their economy. "

" I'm so biased to this issue of the origins of life and the limits of life. "

" I live an hour from NASA's HQ in Washington, D.C., and sitting in a jam stresses me out. "

Ellen Stofan

Washington

Sitting

" Communication is an issue where we can improve, and if I can do anything to help, I am happy to. "

" We want to make sure we get living astronauts to the surface of Mars. "

" As we visit Mars multiple times, we will build up infrastructure on the surface to expand the capabilities and reach of humans on Mars. "

" 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. "

" 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?' "

" I wish someone would redo 'Dune.' "

" To unambiguously settle the questions of whether there was life on Mars, it will take scientists down on the surface. "

" 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. "