Journalists For Space

Confirmed NASA sighting at Comic-Con San Diego!

 By Jonathan Stroud
 JournalistsForSpace.com

NASA has landed, with their Snapchat media team, at San Diego Comic Con to reveal their first ever “NASA’s Next Giant Leap” panel.

The SDCC guests included: actor Seth Green as moderator, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, Planetary Division Director Jim Green, NASA astronaut Mike Fincke, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Systems Engineer Bobak Ferdows. The panel touched on multiple topics but mainly focused on the Moon landing anniversary, and the International Space Station’s role in future missions to Mars.

Director Jim Green addressed observations by scientists that at one point in history Mars went through significant global changes. He continued to explain that, “[Mars] had a huge amount of water. It’s lost most of that water, but a significant amount of it is underground. So from a resource perspective, when the astronauts go and they want to bring their water, we’re going to tell them ‘bring a straw, because we know where to go!'”

Future manned missions to Mars will travel via the International Space Station (ISS) where astronauts will then board the NASA Orion spacecraft to explore the red planet.

Astronaut Mike Fincke drew correlation to popular science-fiction and inspiration for real-science based space missions. He acknowledged that if it wasn’t for fantasy and fiction, the International Space Station may have never have been imagined or built. “This is what’s really neat about Comic-Con and NASA—it’s a natural fit,” said Fincke to the SDCC audience.

At the time of writing this article you could still watch NASA’s behind the scenes Snapchat feed of SDCC and the “Next Giant Leap” event. Don’t panic if you’re reading this more than 24-hours after the event, you can still watch a recording of it at bottom of this article. It is unconfirmed whether the NASA media team will be conducting any Snapchat coverage during day-four of Comic Con in SanDiego, but follow @SpaceJournalism on Twitter for updates. Don’t forget to add the NASA Snapchat for premium behind the scenes snap-videos feeds. Make sure to use the hashtags #JournalistsForSpace, #NASASocial, &#SDCC2016 to keep up with the latest NASA and Comic Con updates!

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Read more about the NASA Comic Con panel at the Official NASA Website.