What can be more exciting than viewing a whole new world?
I love missions that go to Mars, and I think the discoveries there are tremendous. At the same time, in the context of solar system exploration, we know at a very good level what Mars looks like. We may not know a great deal about its internal structure. We may not know what’s underneath that rock over there, or the mineralogy of that structure over there, or what the fissure over there looks like close-up, and there are many exciting surprises yet to be found on that planet. But exploring a whole new world, to me, is really wonderful. That was one of the rewards for Deep Space 1 because, in our extended mission, we obtained the best views ever taken of the nucleus of a comet. I felt like we were introducing Earth to Comet Borrelly. We saw sights that no being—no human being anyway—had ever seen. And at Vesta and Ceres, there will be the opportunity to see many such sites. These are alien worlds that have never been viewed in any kind of detail. The views from the Hubble Space Telescop
