NASA Administrator Bill Nelson's Greeting Message to the SSP24 Opening Ceremony

hello everybody to all of you at the International Space University's space studies program you've chosen a remarkable time and a remarkable place to build a career in the cosmos right from Houston right from Rice University right near NASA's Johnson Space Center so today as we speak Humanity is knocking on the door of a great and dazzling new chapter in the stars because in the coming years we're going to return to the moon and it's going to be a new way we are going back to the Moon not just to go to the moon but to live to learn to invent to create in order for us to be able to go further to Mars and Beyond to set foot on the Red Sands of Mars and the Moon is four days away Mars under conventional propulsion is 7 to eight months away and when we get there we're going to be using science and technology that today still does not exist and the generation that's going to walk on Mars it's going to be you that's just one of the many giant leaps that NASA is planning for the future and that means that this is a perfect time to come to a place like the space studies program what better time to learn new things across every discipline of space for example it doesn't have to actually be looking up you can be looking down down to measure what's happening to climate on the earth and the changes that are occurring we can measure that from space or in looking up to build new ventures in the stars or to do science like we've never seen it before across the solar system out into Interstellar space Across the Universe the tools that you develop this summer will guide you along the way science technology engineering mathematics policy business and others and as important as what you learn this summer is how you look at what you learn a true space education is interdisciplinary it's International it's inter cultural because more than ever before space has the power to build International Partnerships among nations and also in the private sector bringing the private sector and the public sector together so new things are possible more things are possible because people across different continents and countries are working together and that's what you're doing right here in this program so push yourself every day to take advantage of what you're experiencing learn from your courses learn from your teachers learn from your experiences learn from your classmates because in working together that's how we're going to lift Humanity into the Stars on this very camp at the rice Stadium over six decades ago President Kennedy had that famous speech we hadn't gone to the Moon yet it was in the very uh infancy of the American lunar program and he said we choose to go to the moon and do other things not because it's easy are easy but because it's hard spend this summer doing things that are hard ask yourself what is your moonshot use this program to reach onward upward and to reach even higher to reach as dawn kote said to reach for the Impossible Dream to reach the unreachable Stars