Jim Garvin Life Quotations

Looking for life on Mars is such a big task that we really had to start by building a knowledge base. We started exploring Mars with Viking by asking some tough questions, which led to more complicated questions and more exploration. We have to think of it like school. We start in kindergarten learning the alphabet and build from there. In kindergarten, we don't jump right into calculus.

Earth is the laboratory for future discoveries on Mars. Without examining Earth's extreme environments, we wouldn't understand how processes worked to shape the landscape, chemistry and life at the limits. Without that understanding, we couldn't draw conclusions about how life can develop on other planets. By examining these windows to Mars, scientists step out of the vicarious and into real features on Earth that function similarly to those on Mars.