San Martin: NASA's re-evaluating what's next as far as Mars robotic missions. They're doing a study for what they're going to do in 2018 and 2020 ... obviously it could be another Curiosity-type rover, (and) landing, but we have other priorities, too, like putting orbiters (there). Some of the infrastructure of Mars that was so valuable to us, that provided images to choose the landing site, for example, those spacecraft, and that provide the relay of the data during landing and after landing, that's getting old, that infrastructure.

So that needs to also be replaced, so there's a competition for dollars between replacing the stuff we have there in orbit, with sending another rover to the surface of Mars. So they're working on that and there are studies going on as we speak.

Light Years: Is there any science on Mars that you're looking forward to, in particular?

San Martin: I'm looking forward to seeing what Curiosity is going to do. We have this tremendous asset on Mars, with the capability that is a quantum jump relative to the previous ones. Now we can go after organics, to find organics, and we know that it has a very long life, because it has nuclear energy, so we're just looking forward to when the rover goes to Mount Sharp, where the science is, and starts doing exploration there. And hopefully discover great things.