For our last evening lecture, we were fortunate enough to hear from the head of the Smithsonian, Roger D. Launius. Initial leaps in space exploration originated in the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union launched the first ever satellite, The Sputnik, into space. The United States landed the first ever man on the moon. While there is no longer a race between two nations to explore space, there is still an interest. Our planet is only one of many. We do not even know how far space extends.Space has yet to be fully explored by humans. A question that is very important is how can we continue our exploration? The future is in robots. Robot exploration is much more ideal than continuing with human space exploration. The benefits of using a robot is that it does not need to come back. Sending a human into space, on the other hand, would require bringing them back, intense training and supplies to survive. Also, humans have a timeline. Robots, provided that they are engineered correctly, can last much longer than a human life. This means that they can travel for longer periods of time in space.