John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA's science programs, speaks during the Mars Landing Site/Exploration Zone Workshop. (credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)
They gathered in a tightly packed lecture hall near the Johnson Space Center just south of Houston with one goal in mind: Mars. For the 150 geologists, planetary scientists, and aerospace engineers gathered in the room, this wasn’t fiction, like the landing on Mars by Mark Watney and the five other crew members in The Martian. These scientists huddled over laptops and notebooks to begin choosing where humans would land on Mars in real life.
Or so they tried to convince themselves.
Leading the discussion was John Grunsfeld, not exactly a household name, but certainly one of the most decorated astronauts of the space shuttle era. He flew five times in space, including three repair missions to the Hubble Space Telescope. Now that the physicist and self-described “Hubble hugger” has retired from spacewalking, he oversees NASA’s $5 billion science budget.
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