When was NASA’s peak?

The 1,800 scientists who gathered in The Woodlands last week for the 49th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference would argue that we are enjoying the greatest age of space exploration right now.

The meeting is run by the Lunar and Planetary Institute, an organization founded 50 years ago to make the most of NASA’s Apollo mission science. Though humans haven’t ventured beyond Earth’s orbit since Apollo 17 left the lunar surface 46 years ago, humanity’s presence — in the form of robotic spacecraft — has since visited every planet in our solar system (plus two ex-planets and a host of moons, asteroids and comets). NASA currently operates a dozen solar system missions, returning about a gigabyte of new deep-space science data every day.

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Those and the dozens of missions that came before them have revealed our solar system to be a fascinating and dynamic place. NASA missions have confirmed that ice exists on the poles of Mercury, the Moon and in vast deposits under the plains of Mars. Liquid water oceans slosh beneath the icy crusts of a majority of large moons, like Jupiter’s Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Even worlds as cold and distant as Neptune’s moon Triton and the dwarf planet Pluto are active today; Triton sprouts grimy geysers, and Pluto has glaciers of solid nitrogen carving down valleys of water ice.

NASA is currently exploring Mars with two rovers and three orbiters and will launch a new lander in May. The U.S. fleet on Mars is accompanied by two European orbiters and one launched by India. China, Japan and the United Arab Emirates all have near-future plans to launch toward the Red Planet (not to mention the vast ambitions of SpaceX to create permanent settlements). Two missions (one NASA, one from Japan) are en route to collect and return samples from near-Earth asteroids, and a NASA mission will fly past the most distant world ever explored, an object beyond Pluto, at the end of the year.

Why do we send so many spacecraft to so many places? Those of us in the space business enjoy it because we’re curious; we’re fueled by the joy and inspiration of seeing these strange new worlds and finding out how they work. But there are more down-to-Earth reasons, too. We’ve answered lots of questions about our own planet by studying others. We test our atmosphere and climate models on the simpler (because they have no oceans or, as far as we can tell, life) atmospheres of Venus and Mars, and so improve our understanding of our own, much more complex world. We’ve learned how we depend on our magnetic field to keep our air safe (unlike Mars) and how greenhouse gases could turn our planet into a hellhole (like Venus). We’re learning how our beautiful green planet may have looked in its infancy, before life transformed it, by studying Mars rocks that the Curiosity rover has now determined to be 4 billion years old. By going to space, we are studying ourselves.

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We explore to answer questions like: Where did we come from? How did our planet form? How did our sister planets Venus and Mars turn out so apparently lifeless? Did life ever begin there, or are we alone? Is there weirder life, on weirder worlds? The Cassini mission has just ended after 14 years of exploring the Saturn system, where it discovered tiny Enceladus — a world smaller than Texas — is spewing a saltwater ocean into space. Is there life in Enceladus’ depths, protected under its ice? For the first time in human history, technology is not what prevents us from exploring these strange new worlds. The only thing stopping us is money needed to enable these missions.

The achievements of NASA’s robotic program didn’t happen by accident. It takes foresight. Every 10 years, planetary scientists around the country participate in a “decadal survey” process run by the National Academies of Science, in which they debate, define and prioritize the most important scientific questions in the solar system, and what missions would best answer them. This open, collaborative process allows the scientific community to unite behind the objectives articulated in the decadal survey and provide a clear set of priorities to both NASA and Congress. There’s no parallel for the human exploration program, which has been tugged back and forth by the whims (or neglect) of each new executive.

The bipartisan will to support space exploration is there. This year, Congress formed a Planetary Science Caucus, a bipartisan, bicameral group of 26 lawmakers. Their goals are to “find life in our lifetimes” on worlds beyond Earth; to raise awareness of the benefits to the U.S. economy that accrue from federal investment in space science, technology, exploration and public education; and to support private industry, academic institutions and nonprofits that support space science and exploration. With scientific exploration as the goal, this leadership can carry on NASA’s golden age of planetary exploration.