Human Mars Mission Crucial For Finding Aliens, NASA Chief Scientist Says

NASA chief scientist Ellen Stofan has reportedly suggested that sending a human mission to Mars will be a progressive step toward the search for aliens. According to Stofan, the Red Planet itself has the clues about finding the crucial answers to the fundamental scientific questions about life that evolved on Mars and beyond.

NBC News reported that NASA's chief scientist said at a scientific workshop called Searching for Life Across Space and Time, which took place in California's Irvine, that humans can perform tasks on Mars that are difficult for a rover to carry out. For instance, NASA's Curiosity rover that is currently stationed on the Red Planet can only examine the ground up to a depth of 2 meters, whereas human drills could go deeper. Additionally, a manned mission will also make it easier to explore more locations to search for life than a rover could.

"I am someone who believes it is going to take humans on the surface [of Mars] ... to really get at the question of not just did life evolve on Mars, but what is the nature of that life," Stofan said, as Space.com reported. "To me, we are going to go Mars because Mars holds the answers to such fundamental scientific questions that we are trying to ask."

The chief scientist also feels that a human mission to Mars comprising of brave people, who will set up a scientific laboratory on the planet, will enable humans on Earth to know more about what life on the Red Planet tells people about life beyond Earth. Stofan also revealed that she is incredibly optimistic that NASA can actually pull off its plan to send a manned mission into Mars' orbit by early 2030s and onto the surface of the planet by late 2030s.

Incidentally, the scientific interest in Mars goes beyond NASA, and the Chinese, Indian and European space agencies are all sending rovers or probes to the Red Planet. Moreover, even private companies like Elon Musk's SpaceX have set their eyes upon Mars for sending human missions with the plan of eventually colonizing it.