In Our View: Keep Reaching for the Stars

The InSight lander, which arrived Monday on the surface of Mars, has not yet encountered any little green men — so far as we know. But as NASA undertakes its latest mission to explore our nearest planetary neighbor, it is reasonable to ask whether sending a probe to a distant planet is worth it.

For the answer, we turn to the Jim Lovell character in the movie “Apollo 13.” Portrayed by Tom Hanks, Lovell defends the space program of the early 1970s — after the United States had landed a man on the moon — by saying, “Imagine if Christopher Columbus had come back from the New World and no one returned in his footsteps.”

Yes, imagine. Sure, there are differences, considering that no people have yet been sent to Mars, but imagine if humans ignored their thirst for exploration. Imagine if people never desired to cross oceans or fly to the moon. Imagine if we did not benefit today from the technological advancements forged by the space program. A desire to expand our horizons and a belief that something larger is out there helps set humans apart from other creatures on this planet, and we would be remiss to not indulge those traits.

And so NASA has returned to Mars, sending a spacecraft 3 million miles to take up residence on the Red Planet. After landing, InSight unfurled the twin 7-foot-wide solar arrays that will power it during its two-year mission. Unlike the six robotic rovers that previously have been sent to Mars, InSight will remain stationary. It will measure the planet’s seismic activity and heat flowing from the planet, and will study Mars’ core.

As one of the lead scientists said, “Our plan is to use these measurements to determine the temperature of Mars’ interior and to characterize the current geological activity beneath its crust. In addition, we want to find out how the interior of Mars developed, whether it still possesses a hot molten core and what makes Earth so special by comparison.”

In 2020, NASA is planning to send another rover to Mars in its first effort to specifically look for evidence of past life on the planet. That project led Robert Gebelhoff to write in The Washington Post: “In a way, the mission represents hope. At a time when government can’t seem to accomplish very much at all, and when human beings don’t seem to agree on even the most basic values, space missions such as this reach for other worlds and promise to do the impossible. The odds for finding evidence of life beyond our atmosphere are low, but they don’t keep the most brilliant among our species from trying.”

That is invaluable. The InSight lander cost $850 million; the 2020 mission is budgeted at $2 billion. President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence both heralded the latest Mars landing, and Trump has supported formation of a U.S. Space Force as a branch of the military. “We’re doing a tremendous amount of work in space — I said, ‘maybe we need a new force,’ ” the president said in 2016. “We’ll call it the Space Force.” Details have yet to be worked out, but ideally it is a reflection of Americans’ continued fascination with space.

Despite that fascination, NASA is a frequent target of would-be budget cutters in Congress. At a time when federal deficit spending is near record levels despite a strong economy, we hope that lawmakers continue to see the value of extending the reach of humans toward the heavens.

As Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator at NASA, said, “These are the things that pivot humanity. The seafarers who crossed the ocean — is it critical that they did that? Absolutely.”