By Daniel Diggins
Staff Reporter
NASA has been the leading organization to space travel since the 1950s, but do we already know everything about the planet we live on?
According to NASA.gov, they are currently working on 180 missions.
The website also states that the Spitzer Space Telescope has recently discovered a group of seven planets located closely to one star, three of which are in a habitable zone.
NASA’s scientists estimate that these planets are roughly Earth-sized.
“All of these seven planets could have liquid water – key to life as we know it – under the right atmospheric conditions, but the chances are highest with the three in the
habitable zone,” said Public Relations Officer at NASA, Felicia Chou in a statement on NASA’s website.
NASA is also working on many different missions involving Mars. Their website stated these missions include sending rovers, landers and orbiters to Mars. They also hope to be able to send human beings to Mars in the 2030’s.
Although mankind has been making new discoveries in outer space, there have been
new discoveries on Earth as well.
Some students think that it could be worth it to put more effort into exploring Earth.
“There is so much to this earth that we don’t know about. It’s hard to encourage so much space exploration when we could be exploring earth more,” said senior Mike Villate. “It makes more sense to explore the ocean than space.”
Although some believe we should cut spending on space exploration, other students disagree.
“Exploring space is definitely crucial to the future of mankind, there’s no way we can live on this earth forever,” said freshman Bobby Varnum.“Hopefully mankind lives longer than the Earth and by then scientists could have discovered another planet we could live on.”
Even though there are many things unknown in space, some students still think that
exploring Earth and other planets is important.
“I don’t see why we wouldn’t explore both as much as we can. There’s obviously a lot that is undiscovered, both on Earth and outer space,” said junior Brendan Trainor. “There are endless opportunities when it comes to exploring outer space, we could honestly find anything out there.”
NASA will continue to explore outer space and the new discoveries that come with it.
“I’m really looking forward to seeing what happens in the future of space exploration, I’m sure NASA is going to discover some amazing things,” said Trainor.
