how far it is... With our spacecraft it takes us about 9
months to reach Mars – to get from earth to Mars...
The other key challenge is the accuracy of navigation
– when we send a spacecraft, after travelling 450
million kilometres, we have to nail it down within 2
kilometres, to land at the right location.... If you look
at Mars at night in the sky, it is a tiny little dot – and
we have to send a spacecraft to hit that dot... To give
you an idea, if you are a golf player, this is the same
as if I hit a golf ball from California towards Beirut –
it has to land straight in the cup, a hole in one... and to
make it a little bit more interesting and challenging
the cup is moving at high speed – at 60,000 miles per
hour. That’s how accurate we have to be to land
successfully at the right location...
Why do we explore? People ask me, why are
we spending all that money? In general, I would say
that if our ancestors were not explorers, we would
still be living in caves. But they wanted to explore
what’s outside those caves, just as the Phoenicians
Dr Elachi oversees the mission from JPL