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" I live an hour from NASA's HQ in Washington, D.C., and sitting in a jam stresses me out. "
Ellen Stofan
Me
Washington
Sitting
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" Everybody has busy lives, but you can tell people, 'Go outside and look at the night sky. We've been able to demonstrate that every star you see probably has a planet around it.' "
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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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" If you think of the Apollo capsule coming into Earth with a parachute, the Mars atmosphere is just so thin, you've got to find some way of slowing yourself down really rapidly. "
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" When we go to explore, we do it as a globe. "
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" The public has an incredible capacity for appreciating the wonder of our planet, our solar system, our universe. "
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" 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. "
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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. "
Ellen Stofan
Day
Amazing
Great
" 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. "
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Because
Theory
You
" 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. "
Ellen Stofan
Simple
Time
Long
" 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. "
Ellen Stofan
Future
Think
Science
" 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. "
Ellen Stofan
Mission
Exploration
Road
" We want to make sure we get living astronauts to the surface of Mars. "
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Want
Mars
Living
" We actually look to the scientific community to kind of come back to NASA and tell us what the priorities should be. And then at NASA, we try to look within our budget and say, 'What can we accommodate, and what are the most important things for the nation?' "
Ellen Stofan
Priorities
Look
Important
" 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. "
Ellen Stofan
Think
Earth
Doctor
" To unambiguously settle the questions of whether there was life on Mars, it will take scientists down on the surface. "
Ellen Stofan
Mars
Settle
Questions
" People see space as a place where you go and cooperate. "
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Space
People
Go
" You see countries like India really investing in their space program because they see it as inspirational and good for their economy. "
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Space
Inspirational
India
" Communication is an issue where we can improve, and if I can do anything to help, I am happy to. "
Ellen Stofan
Communication
I Can
I Am
" 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. "
Ellen Stofan
Will
Exploring
Mars
" 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
" I'm so biased to this issue of the origins of life and the limits of life. "
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Origins
Biased
Issue
" As we visit Mars multiple times, we will build up infrastructure on the surface to expand the capabilities and reach of humans on Mars. "
Ellen Stofan
Infrastructure
Build
Mars
" It's part of the human character to want to know what's over the next hill, to want to know what's beyond. "
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Want
Hill
Human
" 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?' "
Ellen Stofan
Down
Challenge
Problem
" 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. "
Ellen Stofan
Own
Life
Solar
" 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. "
Ellen Stofan
Rock
Hot
Rocks
" We're going to understand that there is life on other bodies in the solar system. "
Ellen Stofan
Going
Solar
System
" I'm actually a NASA brat. My father was a rocket scientist. He started working at NASA before it was NASA in 1959. "
Ellen Stofan
Rocket
Started
Working
" 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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World
Need
Mars
" One of the big things about space exploration is that it is as expensive as it is complicated, and you need all the countries of the world to help if you want to accomplish big goals. "
Ellen Stofan
You
World
Space