This could ultimately impact the way astronauts eat in space. How important would that be? Be? And I guess what do you see in this mission right now? Someday we're going to go to Mars and fresh food is going to be important.
And when you're that far away, you're not going to be able to send it from Earth. You're going to have to grow it yourself. So growing tomatoes now in the space station is a stepping stone from another level.
When I was in the space station, we were growing lettuce and flowers. Tomatoes are more complicated. It's going to be great to follow along. And I'm sure that technology one day is going to help us get to Mars.
All right, we'll let you get back to the stuff you're doing on the ground here on Earth, which is lending a hand in Ukraine, a greatly needed thing. Hats off to you, Scott, as always. Keep us posted on how things are going over there.
We'd like to check back in with you, say travels. Absolutely. Thank you, Joe. All right, Scott Kelly. Thanks very much. In other news from space, there are images from space that both inspire and humble.
And NASA is releasing these incredible photos of the moon taken by the Orion spacecraft as part of the Artemis One mission. NASA says Orion has surpassed the record set by the Apollo 13 mission when it comes to the distance traveled in the spacecraft designed to transport humans.
By tomorrow, Orion will be more than 270 0 miles away from Earth. The hope is all of this work will eventually establish a path to Mars. Scotty was just talking about that a few moments ago. Joining me now is someone you also know well, renowned astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson.
He's also the author of the book Starry Messenger cosmic Perspective Active on Civilization, a book I could never write. But thank goodness we have Neil to talk about all of this. Neil, for people who say we've seen pictures of the Moon before, why is this so special?
I guess I shouldn't ask that type of question because who cares what they think? And I'm just kidding. But this is an extraordinary thing that's taking place right now. It is, isn't it? I think it should have happened decades ago.
It's been 50 years. 50, count them since we left low Earth orbit. That was the 1072 Apollo 17 mission that went to the Moon, walked on the Moon, and returned to Earth. We haven't left low Earth orbit since then.
So for me, it's a long time coming that this should have been happening decades ago. Yes, of course, we've seen pictures from the Moon, but it's communicating something else, that we are redoubling our efforts to turn space into our backyard.
And I think overall, that's a good thing for civilization. Because to think that Earth is the only thing we should ever think about and care about when we're this dot in the middle of this vast universe, which has unlimited resources, and unlimited discovery, that could ultimately come back and help what our problems are here on Earth, I'm all for it.
Yeah, we were just talking to Scott Kelly about this. He's going to be talking to the Ukrainians about radiation vest technology that's used in space and applying it on the ground in Ukraine to try to protect the people there in case there is some sort of Chornobyl type of incident.
So you're right about that. And all of this brings to mind the words of astronomer Carl Sagan when he wrote of Earth as a pale blue dot. He said, look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us on it.
Everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. These new images, really do put things in perspective. Yeah, because when you go into space, especially deep space, and you see Earth there, not as you learned it in your schoolroom globe with color-coded countries.
No, it says nature intended you to see it with mountains and land and clouds and oceans. That can change you. I have this diabolical plan where I get Elon to build a space bus. The Airbus company makes a space bus, crams all the warring leaders of the world onto that bus, send them out to the Moon, and has them gaze upon Earth and contemplate what their hegemonistic motives ever meant or would mean going forward.
Because here we are, together, alone. And once again, to quote Carl, with no hint that help from elsewhere is going to come to save us from ourselves. We are in this bathtub together called Earth. So space can change you for the better.
And let's talk about Mars. Scott was talking about Mars. I want to talk about Mars with you. The hunt for life beyond Earth. The Mars rover dug up some intriguing clues. Finding signs of a watery past, rocks loaded with a kind of organic molecules that form the building blocks of life.
I hope I have that right. How significant is that? Yeah. So this continues to affirm the possibility, let me even say likelihood, that the prevalence of water elsewhere, not just on Earth, the prevalence of organic molecules elsewhere, not just on Earth, by the way, we found organic molecules in meteors and meteorites that have been found here on Earth that fell from space.
So all the basic ingredients are there. And the question is, what kind of spark is necessary? Spark is a very loose word I'm using there to go from. Inanimate organic molecules to self-replicating life.
That's a big frontier in biology today, but it happened on Earth and it happened pretty quickly, so Mars a near neighbor has all the right ingredients. This gives us very high expectations for there to be lived in many, many places, possibly in our solar system, but indeed across the galaxy.
What is your sense now, Neil, speaking of Mars, as to when humans can get there? Yeah, that's complicated. And dare I say, I wrote a whole book on this space chronicles facing the ultimate frontier. Mars is expensive and it's dangerous.
And generally just the urge to want to do something expensive and dangerous doesn't ever get funded unless there's some geopolitical reason that drives it. I'm reading the history of civilization, by the way, when I say this, some geopolitical reason or a very clean and clear economic return on that investment as a result, I don't see it happening as soon as others do.
Unless some adversary says, we're going to put military bases on Mars and we say, well, we better get there as fast as possible. And if that were the case, we'd be there in ten months, no doubt about it.
And I think some of that competitive, I guess, the energy that you're talking about is driving, I think, part of the reason why we're desperate to get back to the Moon, I think there's part of that involved in that, right?
Yeah. We don't want to be so blunt and admitted to ourselves, but when China started rising and fulfilling their promises of what they would accomplish in space and the Moon showed up in their targets and possibly Mars, that became a flame, lit it beneath us to sort of redouble our efforts.
That had been languishing for decades. I don't think that as a driver can be ignored in this case. And NASA's James Webb telescope has also given us new data about an exoplanet planet outside of our solar system.
Let's talk about this. It's as massive as Saturn, eight times closer to a star, mercuries to the sun, making the temperature on the surface, if I'm getting this right, 1600 degrees. Why is it important that we have this data?
Well, it's not so much the data on that specific planet, but the more we gather data on all the exoplanets. We have multiple satellites, and multiple telescopes engaged in this search. And in 1995, we knew of one planet orbiting a star outside of our solar system.
Today, that number has risen to 5000. And the value of JWST, is that they can see the edge of the universe and newly born planets right in front of our noses. The value there is it has the power to be able to analyze the atmospheres of exoplanets.
And if you can do that without being able to see the surface, which we don't expect to happen any time soon, the atmosphere can be touched by the chemistry of life on the surface just as Earth's atmosphere has been touched.
You would not have oxygen in our air were it not for plant life generating it. And so we call them biomarkers. And so as we comb the catalog of exoplanets, if you were to rank them by which ones you might want to visit first, the day that technology ever comes, you can then put the ones at the top of the list, those that have possible chemical evidence for life on their surface.
And the James Webb Space Telescope will be a leading instrument to help us sort that catalog. All right. Very good. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, thanks so much for breaking it all down for us. Telescopes, missions to Mars, missions to the moon.
I think we covered just about everything, didn't we? We covered a lot. Not the entire universe, but much of it. Neil, thanks as always. We appreciate it. Great to serve you. Thanks. All right. Thank you.