But Hubbard who just published a book about his Mars Czar days ("Exploring Mars: Chronicles from a Decade of Discovery") added that it's in the United States' best interest to give NASA the means to tackle ambitious Mars missions sooner rather than later.
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At a time when rovers are exploring Mars, a satellite is looping around Saturn's rings and a body larger than Pluto was recently found in the far reaches of the solar system, the reader who wants to catch up on developments could have done with a book of more uniform quality.
By exploring and understanding Mars, we may gain key insights into the past and future of our own world.
Exploring and colonizing Mars can bring us new scientific understanding of climate change, of how planet-wide processes can make a warm and wet world into a barren landscape.
In this way, things like rocket engines, satellites, Mars-exploring rovers, space suits, and water purifiers on the International Space Station become part of everyday life on Earth.
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Obama's redirection of the agency caused consternation among former astronauts like Neil Armstrong and John Glenn, and even among the President's supporters: Most people think of nasa's job as one of landing on the moon and Mars and exploring other faraway destinations.
So there is a tremendous database about Mars that we're still exploring, we're still mining.
"We're handing off to the private sector our transportation to the International Space Station so that Nasa can focus on what we do best - exploring even deeper into our Solar System, with missions to an asteroid and Mars on the horizon, " explained agency administrator Charles Bolden.
"I think the range of science questions that are there, and the methodologies and types of vehicle that we use to address that science, is going to follow very much the Mars model - we'll have one mission building on the success of another and exploring different questions, " he told BBC News.
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