James Garvin, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Chief Scientist, gave a lecture this Tuesday, 2nd July, at Técnico – Alameda campus and shared NASA’s future projects. This lecture was held under the partnership between Técnico and the US embassy in Portugal – American Corner Portugal Programme. “I am pleased to announce one of the most intelligent men on this planet”, said the Deputy Chief of Mission at the US embassy in Portugal, Herro Mustafa, at the beginning of the lecture.

“The “web generation” will have the privilege of using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and will be the first one that can go to Mars”, said James Garvin, captivating the audience’s attention immediately.

James Garvin recalled the courage of the generations and the progress of engineering that allowed to land on the moon 50 years ago. The NASA scientist also explained “going back to the moon will allow us to overcome new technological and financial frontiers”. “The moon has no oceans, no water, but we can still use lunar resources”, he stressed. According to James Garvin, a better knowledge of the moon will be key to explore Mars.

“Life on other planets probably exists”, said the NASA scientist, sharing some details about Mars2020 mission, which aims to learn more about Mars’ past and search for evidence of past and present life.

According to James Garvin “the JWST will be launched in 2021 and will be 25 times better than its predecessor Hubble. The JWST will allow us to see new aspects of the Universe over which we can only speculate and to measure the atmosphere of planets orbiting nearby stars”.

At the end, the NASA scientist said “our job is to send you to Space, so that you can use it in a way that only you can imagine”.