NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine: ‘The President Has Been Committed to Planting an American Flag on Mars’

EXCERPT:

BRIDENSTINE: "So, it’s been an amazing journey. This little rover, Curiosity — I say little, it’s about the size of a jeep — it has discovered many things, to include that the methane cycles on Mars are commensurate with the seasons of Mars. That might not mean a lot to very many people, but it is an increased probability that we could find life on Mars. Curiosity has discovered that, you know, in this lake bed where it has been living for seven years, it has discovered that there is, in fact, evidence of mud and flowing water. There are pebbles that are perfectly round, which indicates that not only was it a lake bed that was stagnant, but there was actually flowing water. And so when we add all of this up, to include the discovery of complex organic compounds, in other words the building blocks for life, which don’t exist at all on the Moon, but they are all over Mars, the probability of finding life on another world is going up. We don’t know that it’s there, we don’t know that it was ever there, but we want to find out. And to the extent that anybody finds out, it should be the United States of America, and that’s why the President has been committed to planting an American flag on Mars."