File:KSC-05-S-00179 (ksc 071005 114 hire-4).webm

English: MS. STILSON: John from Syracuse states, as astronauts, you are viewed by many people around the globe as modern-day trailblazers, paving the way for future generations. In your opinion, why is it worth the risk to continue to send human beings into space even while fully automated remote technologies are improving. MS. HIRE: Well, that's a very good question, because, as you know, NASA has quite a long history of having successful robotic missions or automated missions. But it turns out that we need to work with humans and with automated missions. Certain tasks certainly set themselves up well for the automated missions, such as some of the exploration we've done of Mars. But we can't do everything with robotics and the automated missions, that's because we don't fully understand every environment and every task. When you put a human there, they have the ability to adapt real-time, to make decisions and to take actions that we potentially were not able to preprogram into a robotic mission. So there is a place for robotic missions and there is a place for human space flight also. So they work hand in hand to get the most successful results.