What Even Is The Point Of Space Exploration?

After The Martian and NASA's recent Mars discoveries, we started to wonder. So, we asked our members...

I believe space exploration is a worthwhile endeavour for mankind, for many different reasons.

To start with, investigating the unknown is in our blood. Discovering space and planets helps build our curiosity and knowledge and even pushes the boundaries of our scientific and technical limits. Doing so in the past has provided many different benefits to our society.

Human space exploration helps us to address and come to terms with fundamental questions about our place in the universe too, such as how everything works and the history of our solar system.

Also, by discovering more of outer space, we can build on the technologies we already have, create new industries and help to connect with things outside of what we know today.

Another good point to address about the benefits of space exploration is that it allows us to carve a path for our future. Our world will not live forever and someday will face an extinction that will wipe out our entire human population along with other species. For this reason, humanity needs to find a new place to call home.

This is why I believe that landing a man on Mars – as NASA hopes to do by the 2030s - is an amazing idea. We have to find a planet that can house humans and animals, has water and can grow food. Mars (thanks to NASA's program, knowledge, technology and exploration) has become a pretty perfect match.

In conclusion, I believe space exploration is not a waste of time; it is amazing that mankind even managed to come up with and execute space exploration in the first place. It helps us to get perspective and protect and understand our own planet and solar system.

Meaningfully, it also inspires young people to become involved in something greater, especially as our world becomes more technology dependent and we need people to keep enhancing our technology.

To be human is to explore, so this is a brilliant way to uphold that human value. Space exploration brings together many smart people from a variety of different fields and puts them to work on very difficult problems, which result in new discoveries and fantastic inventions. It answers big questions. And finally, it helps find a path for long term survival.

Congratulations to Antonella for winning this writing challenge, answering: What’s The Point Of Space Exploration? Antonella wins a $50 Westfield gift card for her submission. For your chance to win, check out our latest writing challenges in our Comps section. Also, be sure to follow this guide on how to win the writing challenge!