On August 6, 2012, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory completed its most ambitious project: landing the automobile-sized Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars. More than three million people around the world tuned in to watch the precisely choreographed landing. One of Curiosity’s top objectives: to study the habitability of Mars for future human exploration.
From the beginning of the space era, the feasibility of human presence on Mars has been a hotly debated social and political issue. Robert Zubrin, a senior Lockheed Martin aerospace engineer and a longtime NASA collaborator, is a strong advocate of manned missions to Mars. The Case for Mars details his sweeping approach to Mars exploration and his argument that we already have the technology to send people to Mars in a cost-effective way.
