MY CONVERSATION WITH NASA's JONATHAN GRINBLAT

NASA Avionics Systems Engineer Jonathan Grinblat once again joined the 8CN Podcast and discussed the current health of the Mars rover “Curiosity.” Grinblat tells 8CN that the rover is performing much better than they ever expected. Grinblat talks about the current temperature on the surface of Mars, which is surprisingly warmer than we thought. He says that there a lot of unknowns on Mars that can be expected, and that's why we are there, to get a better understanding of things. We also talked about future Mars missions, and NASA's plans to do a return mission that will bring Martian soil back to Earth. Grinblat says that pending funding, a manned mission to Mars is possible within 30 years. Also discussed was the new finding by Curiosity such as an ancient dried up river bed. He also talked about NASA's plans to release video of the rover's travels, and a video of an eclipse that the rover took. Grinblat also talks about the possibility of life either not existing or existing on Mars today. He says that a billion years ago, Mars had a very similar environment to Earth. He's a little more confident that if life does exist on Mars today, it's more likely that it exists beneath the surface. A mission is being talked about that will land a rover on the surface to dig down deep and have a look around. We also discussed proposals to explore Europa by 2018/2020. Europa is talked about frequently as being an even more likely place for life to exist today. Check out the full Podcast interview with Jonathan Grinblat HERE