The Cheshire Academy’s Founders Day was conceived last year as a tribute to the men and women responsible for founding the school in 1794. But their guest speaker, a biologist from NASA, spoke to the gathering of challenges that lay ahead of the academy’s students, and the country, in the future as man reaches out into space. Dr. Neal Pellis, a program manager for cellular biotechnology at the Johnson Space Center in Texas, spoke Friday before more than 200 parents, alumni and students of the monumental national effort that will have to come to pass for manned exploration in deep space, specifically a mission to Mars. “The federal government has not yet given us the go-ahead to plan for a mission to Mars,” Pellis said.