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Live Chat with NASA Chief Scientist Dr. France Cordova
Scholastic Network, February 16th, 1996
OnlineHost: Scholastic Network is pleased to welcome NASA Chief Scientist, Dr. France Cordova. As a special guest during our February event "Exploring the Solar System," she joins us to discuss NASA's next century. NASA has accomplished tremendous feats in its mission to explore the final frontier. Now discover what lies ahead for space exploration. Welcome, Dr. Cordova!
DrCordova: I am really pleased to be here, sharing this time with all of you. I think it is very exciting to be having a virtual discussion of this nature.
Question: Dr. Cordova, please describe your main job as NASA Chief Scientist. What role do you play in NASA's developments?
DrCordova: My role is a unique one. I am in the office of the head of NASA, who is called the NASA Administrator. Our office is in Washington, DC. From my office I can see the Washington Monument and the Capitol. NASA is composed of 10 centers that are distributed all across the US and all together they employ more than 20,000 civil servants and twice as many contractors who work at the centers. So there are a lot of people who work directly for NASA, and a whole lot more, hundreds of thousands, who do work for NASA in industries and universities and other agencies and laboratories.
DrCordova: As NASA Chief Scientist, one role is advising the head of NASA about the scientific research that NASA performs in four major areas: Space science, that includes research on the planet, the solar system and universe; one is on earth sciences, as studied from space; another is in life sciences--life sciences tell us how people can live and work in space; and finally many types of sciences that use changes of gravity to better understand them, like physics.
I advise the head of NASA on all these different areas of science that NASA does. I often review and ask other groups to work with us. I work with science departments in universities and the National Foundation of Science. Another area I work in is in policy and planning. Policy is really the rules of the road--the what we believe in and what rules we will follow in carrying out our activities in a way that strives in the best quality and the maximum participation and serves education. The planning part of it deals with setting the new directions for the next century for NASA's scientific programs.
What is the best way to go about this? What are the many ways we can create new knowledge? This brings me to the last area--once you have the new knowledge, how do we communicate it widely? What are some activities we can do that everyone can know what we are doing for them -- what this new knowledge is about, what we are discovering about space and the earth, and what are the opportunities for people to get more involved in the space program.
Question: What's the most exciting part of your job? What's the hardest part?
DrCordova: The most exciting part for me is when I meet with people who are outside of NASA and I talk to them about what we are doing and I see them get excited--asking them questions and getting inspired. The hardest part of my job is, as you can see from what I described, that there's a lot of activities. Aside from that, there are a lot of areas of NASA, Aeronautics for example, so the hardest thing is finding the balance between those things with the limited budget we have--figuring out what has the highest priority and using the dollars that we have in a way that gives the most back to people.
Question: Many people say we are wasting valuable resources on space exploration -- resources that are needed more to solve problems here on Earth. Why do you think space exploration is important?
DrCordova: If we spent all of our money on any one of the many problems that face us, that would be unwise, because the other problems would not be addressed. In our own individual homes, we have a lot of things we spend money on. The big problem is figuring out what to spend the money on. One thing that means the most to people is the economy. Then there is health care and safety. Another important area is education. Every parent wants their child to have a good education, to have at least as many opportunities as they had when they grew up.
Finally, people want inspiration. People want to feel like they are enjoying life and being inspired by it. All these different things that people care about are all things we have to, as a country, make high priorities of, and to find resources to invest in at the same time--not just one area. NASA is about education and inspiration. In the course of our work, we return a lot of other things -- namely new technology. Our main activity is in acquiring new knowledge and educating people about the universe they live in. Our budget is a very, very small portion of the national budget. I think it is worth having a portion of that. Everybody wins.
Question: I read that NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin invited experts such as scientists, theologians and historians to discuss America's next era in space. What has been the outcome of these meetings? What were the major concerns and common goals?
DrCordova: That's a great question. I was really directly involved in that. I helped Mr. Goldin think about this idea and how to do it. The goal of all of this was to bring a wide variety of people who have a lot of different approaches, who come from different points of view and different aspirations, and talk about America's long term vision of space--what would be a large captivating goal for the very long term. What has come out of that are a lot of ideas that bridge and unify a lot of the areas that NASA is involved with.
One example deals with "origin's" -- is there life elsewhere? We think the question is much larger than "is there intelligent life?" The main question is if there was any kind of life anywhere else in the universe. We have conceived of a program that takes a thoughtful look at this. That was one very big theme that emerged from this. There are many others. Mr. Goldin has put his most current thinking into a speech he has given in a number of places. He is going to give a big speech at NASA in March that is going to go over the NASA TV station.
Question: Are you planning to explore any other planets besides Jupiter and if so, which ones? C.J. from Milton, WI.
DrCordova: We're sending a mission to Saturn in October of 1997. We are planning to send a mission to Pluto, which is the only unexplored planet. We are starting to go back to Mars this year with two spacecraft every other year for the next several years.
Question: When do you expect that humans will land on Mars? Teddy from Northside School.
DrCordova: Well Teddy, we're talking now, this is really not a plan, but more a wish that we may be able, if we do everything right, to start thinking about sending humans to Mars around 2018. It would only take between 7 and 10 months to get there. One could make a round trip in a little under 2 years.
Question: Are the stars useful to us? Wakefield, grade 3.
DrCordova: The stars are very far away, so we can't actually reach out and touch them, but to me, they have always been useful. As a third grader, I often spent time looking up at the stars. It made me happy to do that. It made me feel at peace with the universe and made me ask a lot of questions that got me excited about our universe. So that experience was useful to me.
Question: In NASA's priorities for the next century, how important is the search for other life in our universe?
DrCordova: This will be one of the very highest priorities.
Question: What is the name of the new planet recently discovered?
DrCordova: There isn't a new planet discovered in our solar system. There have been several reports of planets detected around other suns. One sun's name is Gliese 229, which is just a catalog number--it's a big star and using both ground based telescopes and the Hubble Telescope pictures have been taken of this planet. To my knowledge, it doesn't have a name. It takes a long time to name things.
Question: Do you think more women and people of color are entering science today?
DrCordova: They are entering some kinds of science, but not all. There are actually some good numbers that various foundations are keeping track of--biology has more women, for example, than physics. I know there are places like the American Association for the Advancement of Science which keeps records of this--they can be asked for these numbers.
Question: In exploring various planets, what does NASA consider significant signs of life? Has NASA identified places where they feel there could be life? Where?
DrCordova: The answer to the first question was the subject of one of the big seminars we talked about earlier. We asked chemists and biologists to talk about what are signs of life. there are many different signs and different ways, different approaches depending on what you are looking for. The biggest sign of life, the clearest, is the appearance of water in the liquid state. One place is Mars. We feel we have to go back to Mars to look at it with new instruments that go below the surface that look for signs of fossilized life. We don't have any expectations to find existing life.
This mission to Saturn that will go in 1997 will drop a probe on to Titan, which is a big moon of Saturn. We don't expect to find life, but we might find some signs of "pre life" situations that will give us clues of the origins of life. Europa is another exciting place to look. We will look for ways that life started, but we don't have any expectations to find life right now.
Question: The Hubble Telescope is bringing us remarkable data. In one of your speeches you indicated that we need even stronger telescopes to learn more about the universe. What would be the next step up from the Hubble?
DrCordova: The next step would be to have a telescope or a group of telescopes in space that covered a very large area that could see things that were much, much fainter than Hubble, and see much more detail. The two best things one can do is figure out a way to have very large telescope surfaces in space that are light enough and flexible enough to make corrections on them using computers that are controlled by operators on the ground. If you have a few of these in space, and they all can communicate with each other, you can effectively make a telescope that is the size of the parts, giving us more power to see into space.
Question: From Matt at LMS Louisiana, MO: About what time will we be able to send a space probe to a different solar system to learn about other life forms there?
DrCordova: I don't know. We first have to identify where it is that we want to go and figure out how far away that place is. Then we will know how long it will take us. Even the closest stars are so far away that the first probe that we sent will probably not be returning any information to us for decades. We are really going to have to think about how to do this. I don't think it is going to be anytime soon. Our approach is not to think in those great big steps, but think in small steps -- and the fastest and cheapest way to do this. Our first step is how to develop these powerful telescopes to find these places, then to figure out what the next step is.
Question: Which planet do you think is most similar to ours? Louisville, grade 1-3.
DrCordova: Mars. Mars and Earth may have looked more similar in the past, billions of years ago. Now they look quite different. But they are both in the "life zone." If Mars had a thick atmosphere, it could have water and support life.
Question: What advice would you give to a fourth grade African-American girl who wants to become an astronaut?
DrCordova: Our astronauts come from all different backgrounds. Some are scientists. Some are pilots. Some are engineers. I think it is possible to be an astronaut doing almost anything, but doing it well. Being in good health and good physical condition, being in good mental shape, paying attention to your studies, getting a broad education. And when you get to college, start learning about one particular thing very well, so you become an expert in it. That is what you can bring to the space program -- your expertise and enthusiasm.
Question: If you could discover the answer to one question about the universe, what would it be? How would this knowledge be significant in our understanding of space?
DrCordova: I think this question we've talked about: How did life get started, and is life a common thing -- are we unique, if so, why? This whole question of if Earth is the only place that has life is an extremely important one because it speaks directly to us.
I myself have another question. One question is why am I attracted to astronomy and physics. I have a PhD in physics. I would like to know what the universe really looks like. When you go all the way back to the Big Bang, what did the universe look like then? What is beyond the universe? I would like to know about the shape of space and know more about time--why time runs in one direction.
I am very happy that I got to spend a few minutes with you today and to hear some of your questions, all of which were excellent and show that you are really thinking about the universe and the space program. My biggest wish for right now is that more people would be interested in space, and in the big questions we can use space to find out about. We've talked a lot about science, but there are exploration questions. I'd like for all of you to read about space, to think about how you can be a part of the space program and how space can touch your future.
OnlineHost: Many thanks to Dr. France Cordova for joining Scholastic Network this afternoon. We've learned a lot about NASA and our next century in space. And thanks to our audience for your great questions!
A special thanks should go to Blackside, Inc. for bringing us Dr. Cordova. She will be featured in their new PBS series "Breakthrough: The Changing Face of Science in America" that is airing in April. The program focuses on people of color in American science.
To learn more about Dr. Cordova, stop by our February special event, "Exploring the Solar System," on Scholastic Network. (keyword: Scholastic)
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