Planetary Exploration Quotes

We've explored every type of environment in the solar system at least once.

The rocket worked perfectly, except for landing on the wrong planet.

About the only things that are unique to Earth are our biota and our culture. If aliens ever come here, they'd most likely be either biologists or music fans. Neither one has much reason to antagonize our armed forces.

It is quite moving to hold a piece of Mars in your hands and to reflect on its incredible interplanetary journey, and the science that gives confidence as to the origin of this unusual rock.

The best way to study Mars is with two hands, eyes and ears of a geologist, first at a moon orbiting Mars... and then on the surface.

New Horizons isn't just visiting Pluto; it's visiting this entire region. Whatever it finds, this will be a signal moment for planetary exploration - the capstone to our first reconnaissance of the planets of our solar system.

The first stories I wrote when I was 12 were about Mars and landing on Mars.

What comes after the moon? I think you can guess: Mars.

The exploration of the planets is now closer to us in time than the exploration of Africa by Stanley and Livingstone.

Yet another spunky li'l NASA robot lands and begins transmitting back photographs of rocks that appear virtually identical to the rock photos beamed back by all the other spunky li'l NASA robots, thus confirming suspicions that the universe has a LOT of rocks in it.

When the Voyager 2 spacecraft sped through the Saturnian system more than a quarter of a century ago, it came within 90,000 kilometers of the moon Enceladus. Over the course of a few hours, its cameras returned a handful of images that confounded planetary scientists for years.

I've always been fascinated with science and exploring our world, from microbes to the solar system.

By going to Pluto, we have a chance to anchor, with real data, models of the early evolution of Earth's atmosphere.

When you think about exploring deep space, it's very dangerous for humans. To potentially sacrifice human life is a delicate proposition. On the flip side, if you want to send a robot to another planet for an extended period of time and at some point you know it'll cease to function, it's not considered a tragedy.

One hardly knows where, in the history of science, to look for an important movement that had its effective start in so pure and simple an accident as that which led to the building of the great Washington telescope, and went on to the discovery of the satellites of Mars.

The crossing of space ... may do much to turn men's minds outwards and away from their present tribal squabbles. In this sense, the rocket, far from being one of the destroyers of civilisation, may provide the safety-value that is needed to preserve it.

Exploration of closer planets will continue. Only after he exhausts all the resources here on earth will man go further ahead, which is when interplanetary travel may take place.

No one planet can tell us everything about the universe, but Neptune seems to hold more than its share of information about the formation of our own solar system - as well as the solar systems beyond.

Saturn is such an alluring photographic target.

If we knew exactly what to expect throughout the Solar System, we would have no reason to explore it.

Pluto is showing us a diversity of landforms and complexity of processes that rival anything we've seen in the solar system.

People keep talking about how we have to go to Mars. We may want to go to Mars sometime.

The 20th Century was the century of Aviation and the century of Globalization. The next century will be the century of Space.

I'm never going to go to Mars, but I've helped inspire, thank goodness, the people who built the rockets and sent our photographic equipment off to Mars.

For planetary explorers like us, there is little that can compare to the sighting of activity on another solar system body. This has been a heart-stopper, and surely one of our most thrilling results.