Let me know if you find Martians - Obama to NASA
US: President Barack Obama on Monday ribbed scientists behind NASA's
roving robot Curiosity, instructing them to let him know right away if
they found life on Mars.“If in fact, you do make contact with Martians,
please let me know right away,” Obama joked, as he called the scientists
at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California from Air Force One.
“I've got a lot of other things on my plate, but I suspect that that
will go to the top of the list. Even if they're just microbes, it will
be pretty exciting.” Curiosity touched down on Mars last week, after a
high-risk landing, and will hunt for soil-based signatures of life on
Earth's nearest neighbor and send back data to prepare for a future
human mission.
It will also haul a Mars Science Laboratory as far as halfway up
Mount Sharp, a towering three-mile (five-kilometer) Martian mountain
with sediment layers that may be up to a billion years old. Obama said
that thanks to the dedication of NASA scientists, Curiosity “stuck her
landing and captured the attention and imagination of millions of people
not just across our country, but people all around the world. “You've
made NASA proud. You guys are examples of American know-how and
ingenuity, and it's really an amazing accomplishment,” he said, and
offered a political vow to maintain critical investment in science and
technology.
Obama's call was another example of the advantages of political
incumbency: he got to talk to the scientists in his official role from
his presidential plane while his Republican foe Mitt Romney only got to
talk about them. AFP
|