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NASA's Chief Scientist Predicts Evidence For Life Beyond Earth By 2025

Posted by Soulskill on from the and-it'll-take-just-a-few-years-after-that-to-make-them-angry-at-us dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Ellen Stofan, chief scientist at NASA, predicts we're not far off from finding evidence for alien life. At a panel discussion yesterday, she said, "I think we're going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade, and I think we're going to have definitive evidence within 20 to 30 years." She added, "We know where to look. We know how to look. In most cases we have the technology, and we're on a path to implementing it." Stofan thinks putting astronauts on Mars will be a big part of that goal. As efficient as robot missions are, she thinks it'll take humans digging and cracking rocks to find definitive evidence for life on other worlds.

2 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. Re: You know it's just PR by cyber-vandal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Much worse than space nutters are you miserable bean counters. Let's not do anything or go anywhere because "my God the expense!". Let's carry on with pointless resource ears to enrich the already insanely wealthy even further.

  2. Robots are proxies, not substitutes by sjbe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Humans operate it either way, the only major difference between a robot and a physical presence is higher latency for robots, and orders of magnitude greater cost for humans.

    That is not the only major difference. Humans can create new tools and are vastly more flexible in what they can do than any robot. It's more than mere latency. Furthermore there are some bits of information that simply cannot be obtained by a robot. There is a huge difference between looking through a webcam at an ocean and actually standing at the shore yourself. There is information about humans that can only be obtained by sending humans. There are economic benefits to developing the technology to send humans that go far beyond the mission itself.

    Going to other planets isn't just a geology project. There are some things we will only learn if we are there ourselves.