David Grinspoon

I was a science fiction geek from an early age, enthralled by the questions of life in the universe. As I got older, I learned that space exploration was real. I wanted to get involved in that. I knew I wanted to be a scientist.

Ever since the environmental movement was sparked by photos of the whole Earth taken by astronauts onboard Apollo Lunar Modules, I've seen planetary exploration as an extension of a reverence and care for Earth.

I think a lot of people interested in space exploration tend to hear stories about the great missions, how they work technically, what we learned. But they don't really hear the story of what it takes to get a mission from scratch to the launch pad and into space.

It's quite possible that the end of us will not be the end of the Earth. Even if we really screw things up and things go badly for us and our civilization, the Earth is pretty resilient.

It's one of the big mysteries about Venus: How did it get so different from Earth when it seems likely to have started so similarly? The question becomes richer when you consider astrobiology, the possibility that Venus and Earth were very similar during the time of the origin of life on Earth.

It is said that Mahatma Gandhi, when asked about Western civilization, remarked, 'I think it would be a good idea.' That's how I feel about intelligent life on Earth, especially when I think about the question of what truly intelligent life might look like elsewhere in the universe.

Titan has rivers and lakes of liquid methane and ethane, methane weather systems of clouds and storms that mirror Earth's hydrologic cycle, and seasonal cycles that rival Earth's in complexity.

Venus and Mars are our next of kin: they are the two most Earth-like planets that we know about. They're the only two other very Earth-like planets in our solar system, meaning they orbit close to the sun; they have rocky surfaces and thin atmospheres.

It's quite possible there's as much lightning on Venus as on Earth.

There is a history of thinking about space science from an environmental ethics perspective. And part of what I want to do is turn that back and use that experience to see if it reflects how we think about the Earth.

I intend to apply the perspective of astrobiology, which is a deep-time way of looking at life on Earth, towards the question of the Anthropocene. What does the human phenomenon on Earth look like viewed from an interplanetary perspective?

What I'm interested in is the conversations going on about the Anthropocene and what it means to view ourselves as a part of Earth's geological history.