Scott Hubbard is NASA's Mars Program Director. Newly appointed to his post, Hubbard was associate director for Astrobiology and Space Programs at the NASA Ames Research Center. He has over 25 years of experience in research, development and management of space-science missions. Of those years, more than a decade was directly related to Mars exploration.

"Trying to get your arms around Mars is a big challenge," admits Hubbard.

SPACE.com's Leonard David caught up with Hubbard, just after the June 22 NASA press conference detailing the possible discovery of liquid water on Mars.
 
 

SPACE.com: As director of the entire Mars program effort, what are the goals of your office?

Hubbard: I want to put together a true program, more than a collection of missions. It must be a program that has a vision, and a strategy to accomplish that vision. The idea is to look for Mars life, past or present, as well as follow the water on that planet. Also, what technologies and projects are needed? All of these feed into the picture. Mars is a special opportunity and a special challenge.

SPACE.com: How so?

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Hubbard: The opportunity is that you can go every 26 months. The challenge is that you can go every 26 months. It puts a lot of pressure on defining projects. But it also means you have the opportunity to go back and reinvestigate things and actually test a hypothesis.

SPACE.com: So this new finding about possible water on Mars fits nicely into your program?

Hubbard: The discovery of possible modern water gushing on the surface of Mars is something that nobody expected. And there are going to be other surprises too. You can count on that.

SPACE.com: What can be done to maintain public interest in Mars exploration?

Hubbard: We need to get the images and the findings out to the public as quickly as possible, and in a very engaging way. We have to show the public that Mars is not some digital reality cooked up by Industrial Light and Magic in California. Mars is a very bizarre place. There are things there that nobody expected, like today's announcement about liquid water near the surface. One possibility is constructing a virtual environment out of the real Mars images. That would allow people to experience Mars for themselves.

Putting people on Mars

SPACE.com: There is a public hungering to send humans to Mars. Of what value can humans contribute to exploring the Red Planet?

Hubbard: Some friends of mine are Mars geologists. They say the best combination of computation and capability is the human geologist on Mars. That person would have a hand lens and a pick. I've also talked to the leading, cutting-edge autonomy folks. They say we're very far away from having robots on Mars that would have the capability of a human geologist, in terms of eye and brain, recognizing features, and also have the flexibility of decision making.

  SPACE.com: Then why not move out on sending humans?

Hubbard: First of all, there is the getting there. Then there is being there. The "getting there" has a lot of questions associated with it. We need to know it's affordable. We need to know that we're technologically ready for putting people on Mars. There needs to be the national will to spend the money. We need to understand and solve the host of biological and biomedical issues having to do with living and working in space. We'll get a lot of that from the International Space Station.

SPACE.com: And the "being there?"

Hubbard: I think that probably has to get to the issue of doing things, maybe aided by robots, to answer fundamental questions, such as: Are we alone? Is there life elsewhere in the universe? That we could not do with robots alone. That could be "a" reason for humans on Mars.

Decisions, decisions

SPACE.com: You have a major decision coming up to select either a 2003 Mars orbiter or a lander. How do you plan to make that decision?

Hubbard: That decision will come next month, in mid July.

I have laid out a set of criteria. In schedule, we're less than three years from launch of a Mars 2003 spacecraft. Mission success has to be number one. That is followed very closely by scientific merit. We consider affordability, not only the absolute cost, but the cost per unit of science returned. And maybe a tiebreaker is public engagement. We wouldn't make a decision purely on that, but all things equal, that might be one of the elements we'd use to select the mission.

Let me be clear. Both of the mission concepts are good, particularly in light of today's announcement about water. We're going to look at each mission on its own. We'll do a risk assessment: Is it ready to go? Can we actually build the spacecraft and have a high degree of confidence that we will be successful in launching it in May 2003?

International cooperation

SPACE.com: How much of the NASA Mars program should involve other nations?

Hubbard: I think the Mars program is an international program. Certainly, science is international. That has been the case for hundreds of years. No single country has the resources for complete, large-scale exploration. We have to have partners to work with. They bring resources to the table that you may not have.

SPACE.com: But looking at the International Space Station, there are those who say it's far too complicated for nations to work together.

Hubbard: We have to be realistic and say that international collaboration carries some overhead with it. But the net is still a program that is larger and, hopefully, more robust than you would have had by yourself. So on that basis, I think it's the right thing to do, but with eyes wide open and with both parties understanding what they are getting into.

Bringing it all back home

SPACE.com: The Mars sample-return mission has been scrapped for the time being. Is it really necessary?

Hubbard: I think the actual mix of orbiting spacecraft, studies done on the surface and return-sample missions, is going to depend on scientific and programmatic requirements and constraints. We have a scientific group revisiting this issue.

I expect to see, even with today's announcement of the potential for near-surface water, that sample return is going to loom high on the list of scientific objectives.

The question is how do we do it…and how to do it within budget constraints we have?

The previous return-sample architecture had a couple areas of technology challenges. We need to address those before committing to a full-up mission. Aspects of the return-sample mission might be tested in Earth orbit. We're open to ideas.

I really don't want to jump into a mission before we are technologically ready. Elements of the previous sample-return mission design were quite immature and needed validation.

A second home for humans

SPACE.com: How does Mars fit into the 21st century? Given that 100-year period, do you sense humans can go to Mars to stay?

Hubbard: Here I have to say that I'm not speaking NASA policy as the Mars Program Director.

But I think that part of the human condition is exploration, and knowing what's over the next hill. Or, in this case, what's on the next world. That will, continuously, be a drive and an interest to get into space. To go to another real planet, to explore it, and I think eventually to live there.

Let's take another tact on the question of comparative planetology. What happened to Mars? Why did it go the way it did? There's probably lessons there for Earth as well. By exploring that other planet, we can bring that information back and maybe help chart our own future.

Message from Mars

SPACE.com: When you talk Mars to aerospace industry and other parts of government, what's your message?

Hubbard: I want to put the fun back into Mars exploration. I have a feeling that we have put so many constraints on projects that some of the fun has gotten squeezed out. So the message for everybody is: Let's put some of the fun back into Mars exploration, because it's tremendously exciting.

SPACE.com: And your message for the public?