[ rocket engines roaring ]
3...2...1...0. 
We have commit.
We have liftoff.
(Christa Peters-Lidard) Over 50 years ago,
the Apollo 8 mission launched to the moon
in December of 1968. 
As part of this mission,
three astronauts were able
to capture an iconic image
of the Earth rising over the
moon, known as Earthrise.
[ on recording ] We're moving around
to a good view of the Earth.
(Christa Peters-Lidard) This image
inspired a generation of environmental activism, 
starting with Earth Day, and decades
of environmental activism since.
The NASA Goddard Space Flight
Center's Earth Sciences Division
is the largest collection of
Earth scientists on the planet,
and our job is to
be the nation's trusted source
of comprehensive environmental
information about the current
state and the future of the
Earth. We build, design, launch
and operate scientific missions
including satellites,
airborne campaigns on aircraft,
as well as ground campaigns,
to understand how the Earth
works and how to predict how the
Earth will change in the future.
(Nathan Kurtz) Goddard developed
two space-based LIDARs
that have launched in the past
year, those being GEDI,
which is used to measure the
vegetation structure of Earth,
and ICESat-2, which measures,
among other things,
vegetation, atmosphere, ocean,
and changes in the ice cover.
With ICESat-2, we're just starting
to see the first year of data.
So what we've seen is the
thickness of the ice 
in the Arctic change
over the course of the year. 
So we've seen it at its minimum
and we saw the ice grow
to its maximum extent in March,
and maximum thickness. 
What we've seen too is that thickness...
it's a lot less than it was
in prior decades, so it's about
half as thick as it was, say, 
in the 80s. So we've seen a
substantial change in the ice.
We've also started measuring ice
in the summer with ICESat-2,
and looking to get... can we
see how thick that ice is? 
It's a procedure to be able to
do that and this is brand new
data that we're just first
seeing with ICESat-2. 
(Doug Morton) From our vantage point in space,
we have a global perspective on the role
the role of fires in the Earth system.
We see landscapes where fires are increasing,
especially in places where
there's plenty of fuel to burn.
Warmer and drier climate
means those fires can grow
faster, get larger, and blow
their smoke further downwind, 
impacting communities not just
in the locations where fires
burn, but people thousands of
miles away. NASA has more than
20 satellites on orbit right
now. Each of them help us tell a
part of the story about how fire
changes the Earth system. 
We are the first to detect fires
burning in remote locations
with satellites that observe the
location and the intensity of
fires. We're also then tracking
the smoke and the way the smoke
from fires blows to impact
not just local communities, but
people that could live thousands
of miles away. Fires in
California, for example in 2017,
sent their smoke as far East as
New England. Those trace gasses
and the aerosols that fires
release then change our
entire planet. And so at NASA,
scientists like myself are
responsible for not just finding
those fires, but tracking the
impacts they have on ecosystems
and the consequences of those
fires in our atmosphere. 
(Susan Strahan) NASA has been studying ozone
from space for about 40 years now. 
We have nearly daily, global
measurements of ozone since
1979. Science is showing us
that the Montreal Protocol is an
effective treaty and it's
working as intended, and I think
that's fantastic news for all
of us on the whole planet!
We learned that if you look at
the HCl, hydrochloric acid,
measurements during certain
conditions inside the ozone
hole, and then you track those
conditions each year, you can
make a measurement of whether or
not the chlorine is going down.
And it turns out that as the
chlorine goes down, we're seeing
the amount of ozone depletion
going down right along with it.
So the two are tracking
together. And that gives us
confidence that this treaty is successful
and it's working as intended.
(Jeremy Werdell) The ocean is absolutely
immense and it's very difficult to be
all places at all times. This is
where  satellites come in.
There's a fleet of
earth-observing satellites
hosted by NASA that view the
global ocean every two days.
The PACE mission is NASA's
Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean
Ecosystem mission, scheduled for
launch in December of 2022.
It is NASA's next big investment
in the combined study of the oceans
and the atmospheres. From the
oceans, it's designed to improve
our ability to discriminate and
identify phytoplankton community
structure. In particular, their
evolution in time and space.
(Lesley Ott) Satellites give us about
6 million observations of weather
every 6 hours,  so that's a
whole lot of data! One of the
things at NASA that we do is try
to do a good job of merging all
of that data with a model field.
That's the starting point of a
weather forecast, and that helps
us improve the way that we can
predict weather. That improves
the way that we get weather
forecasts on our phone and
improves our lives a little bit
every day. NASA plays a really
critical role in that because we
understand satellites probably
as well as anyone in the world.
And so we can really pioneer and
get new types of data into those
weather forecasts and make
sure that that helps us improve
forecasts for everyone going
forward. 
(Jeremy Werdell) Being at
Goddard is absolutely incredible.
It's one of the greatest collections
of Earth scientists in the world.
So the access that we have to each other
is just, in my mind, unparalleled.
(Susan Strahan) There are so many really smart
people that know... that have expertise in
so many different areas of atmospheres:
chemistry, dynamics, in measurements, in modeling.
(Lesley Ott) It's a fast-moving
group of people,
but it's always changing. And it's a whole lot
of fun to be a part of all of that energy.
(Christa Peters-Lidard)
NASA's Artemis mission is an
opportunity to look back at
Earth and regain that sense of
awe and wonder that we had
with the Earthrise photo that
inspired our
environmental movement.
