NASA celebrates 60th anniversary in Spain

Deputy Deputy Head of the Directorate of Scientific Missions POT, Sandra Connellyexplained that the US government’s aerospace agency aims to establish a sustainable presence on the Moon and then go to Mars.

“We went to Moon one day and we will be back to have a sustainable presence. We strive for a sustainable presence so that we can have people on the moon and then go to the moon. Mars and beyond,” Connelly said in an interview with Europa Press on the occasion 60th anniversary of NASA in Spain.

The expert noted that over these 60 years, NASA has maintained an “excellent relationship” with Spain, which supported its deep space missions through a “key communications network.”

Deputy Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. predicts humans will be able to go to Mars ‘in two decades’. In this context, he detailed that NASA has rovers on Mars and orbiters flying around the planet.

“We already have a lot of robotic planes, space planes, and we’re collecting numerous samples to bring them back to Earth,” he said.

Regarding NASA collaboration with private companiesConnelly calls it “remarkable” to see how “private industry has developed and expanded.”

“Not only is it the government’s responsibility to explore space, but I love how the industry has evolved. We have commercial services to get payloads to the Moon, we have a commercial team, commercial positions, so the industry really supports the expansion of space, and they’re the ones who will actually maintain a sustainable presence on Mars and beyond,” he said.

In the same way he valuedI use artificial intelligence at NASA. “The Deep Space Network (DSN), the reason we are here in Madrid, brings in almost a million megabytes of data a day, and artificial intelligence is already helping us interpret this data to advance our science and our understanding of technology.” and intelligence, so that’s a key part of moving forward,” he said.

The expert also emphasized that Spain “is one of the main countries” in space explorationemphasizing the importance of NASA’s coordination with both Spain and the European Space Agency (ESA).

At this point, he noted that it is “amazing” to have astronauts from all over the world, including Spain, and noted that the fact that there is a commercial industry that also carries astronauts into space is “expanding.”