14 DAY TRIAL // Ridley Scott's “The Martian” is poised to open a couple of weeks from now and, rather predictably, space exploration has become a hot topic in these days leading up to the movie's premiere.
After all, there's nothing like a blockbuster to get people's attention and get them talking about whatever it is you want them focusing on.
Matt Damon, star of “The Martian,” has too joined the chitter-chatter. In a new video, available after the jump, he discusses NASA's journey to Mars, which the actor says will make history when the space agency at long last lands a crew of astronauts on the Red Planet.
“Sending people to Mars and returning them safely is the challenge of a generation,” Matt Damon says, looking all grave and preoccupied with what space exploration will bring us in just a few years.
The actor then goes on to talk about how studies carried out aboard the International Space Station are helping scientists figure out how to keep astronauts safe while away from our planet, and how NASA is already working on the technologies that will carry crews to Mars.
For starters, there's the Space Launch System rocket, which NASA describes as the most powerful rocket ever known to mankind and that only recently had one of its four engines tested at the Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis in Mississippi.
Then there's the Orion spacecraft, which will be blasted into space with the help of the Space Launch System and which should land the first people on Mars.
True, the US space agency doesn't yet know for sure when exactly it will sent astronauts to the Red Planet. Still, we can expect it will happen by the end of this century.
