Houston, we have a podcast.

Welcome to the official podcast of the Dassa Johnson Space Center,

episode 185, returning the first Martians.

I'm Gary Jordan, and I'll be your host today.

On this podcast, we bring in the experts,

scientists, engineers, and astronauts all to let you know what's going on in the world of

human spaceflight. So this is the series finale of our Mars monthly series on first Fridays.

Last month we chat it with Natalie Mary about the spacesuits needed to explore the Martian surface.

So today we're wrapping up the series by talking about the end of the journey.

At this point, in the human mission, astronauts have used their space suits, they collected some

rocks, and they packed their bags.

Now they're ready to get back to planet Earth.

Launching from the surface of another planet is an element of a Mars mission that will be wholly new,

and the piece that will be truly breaking new ground.

So the unique piece here is an ascent vehicle that will

need to be pre-positioned on Mars, ready for liftoff, way in advance, and

launched flawlessly without ground support that we're used to here for Earthly launches.

To help dive deep into this area, we're bringing in four, yes, four experts.

First is Tara Polsgrove.

She has a degree in aerospace engineering from Georgia Tech and a master's degree in

Systems Engineering from the University of Alabama. She currently serves as the lead systems

engineer with the Human Landing System program,

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