2024 NASA Goddard Summer Film Festival

my future is a future where technology is married to compassion comp compion the stories that you can tell around the images make something very very powerful this is um this is going to change the world the folks at home this is a huge deal TouchDown for science bu was fixed total success this is a small step for a capsule and a giant Le forence we might not actually even know what we're going to see and that's part of the excitement after 13 years in deep space at the start of a new decade alone on a new world the journey will continue It's the Great American comback Story 2 [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] if you're looking to catch the April 8th total solar eclipse you'll want to be somewhere with clear skies for some scientists that means heading above the [Music] clouds during the 2024 solar eclipse the wb-57 airplanes will be flying at an altitude of about 50,000 ft chasing the eclipse Shadow over the coast of Mexico near Mazatlan three science teams will be using two WB 57 jet planes to study different aspects of the e CPS firstly these two teams with instruments in the nose and wings will be looking at the sun's outer atmosphere known as the corona scientists often study the corona using spacecraft with Corona graphs these are ulting discs that help block out the bright Sun but they also cover up the inner part of the corona during a total solar eclipse the moon perfectly blocks the sun's bright disc allowing the entire Corona to appear a total eclipse gives us the best view of the corona we can get and it's even better when viewed from above the most exciting part of using the w57 is to get over the clouds and to get to a layer of the atmosphere where it's so much less dense this means that you can access wavelengths of light that you normally wouldn't be able to access on the ground the team led by the University of Hawaii will measure different wavelengths of light using spectrometers and cameras their instruments will give insight into the Corona's chemical composition and temperature we want to figure out what kind of processes are operating in the sun just above its surface or at its surface for the team led by the Southwest Research Institute this will be their second time chasing an eclipse so they're using an improved camera setup in 2024 we're flying an evolution of the experiment we flew in 2017 back then we flew two cameras in two different wavelength ranges for this experiment we're flying four cameras that can measure in seven different wavelength ranges and that gives us more information about the kinds of structures that we're going to see the corona could hold Clues to what creates solar wind the stream of charg particles coming from the Sun that can cause auroras but also potential threats to our satellites and astronauts the sun can also affect technology closer to home and the eclipse allows scientists to analyze those es beneath the plane the team led by Virginia Tech Will mount an instrument called an ion aond to study how the Moon Shadow will affect earth's upper atmosphere known as the ionosphere this is an electrically charged region of the upper atmosphere where GPS signals and radio waves travel so during the eclipse when the moon casts a dark shadow on earth scientists will see how the lack of solar radiation changes the ionosphere sometimes GPS systems can be adversely impacted because of certain pertubations or variations in the ionosphere using this experiment we can uh characterize and understand how changes in the solar radiation can impact some of these uh technologies that we rely on in our daily lives being in the air not only gives the teams a better vantage point but it gives them a longer Eclipse too one of the main advantages of flying the instrument on the plane is that you'll be able to track the totality over an extended interval of time the Jets will launch from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston Texas and travel 460 mph allowing them to briefly chase the Moon Shadow as it sweeps across Mexico and Texas this means the instruments will observe the eclipse 25% longer than from the ground giving these teams a unique chance to do science we might not actually even know what we're going to see and that's part of the excitement is opening brand new discovery space and learning new things about the [Music] sun let's talk about fossils not the dinosaur remnants here on Earth but the galactic kind scientists recently found one that's helping them understand Galactic Evolution just 13 million light years from here is a Galaxy called NGC 49 4 [Music] five and its Center is a super massive black hole it's surrounded by both a disc of gas emitting a lot of light and a bunch of dust blocking much of that light the Galaxy is also in a phase of evolution called Starburst where a lot of stars are being born near its Center recently using x-rays Isa xmm Newton telescope spotted a cloud of cold gas in NGC 4945 the gas expands light years beyond the central part of the Galaxy and pokes out into Intergalactic space NASA's chantra x-ray Observatory helped study it too by looking at individual bright sources of x-rays within that cloud [Music] scientists think that the area of cold gas is a fossil of an eruption from a black hole that happened about 5 million years ago that eruption may have caused the Galaxy's burst of star formation studying Galactic change is hard because it happens over such long time scales but by looking at lots of examples scientists can piece together how galaxies like ngz 4945 and our Milky Way evolve to know Earth we must know our oceans water is the lifeblood of our planet integral to all of its Dynamic systems oceans are crucial conveyor belts Distributing heat around the globe and impacting climate and weather with eyes in the sky NASA's unique perspective gives an unprecedented view of our Blue Marble home but how well can a space agency really know our oceans more than you might think the National Aeronautics and Space Administration present the first desap collected data for 99 days since 1960 weather satellites have given us the ability to observe and track a hurricane from the time of its birth for the first time ocean currents can be mapped from space with sufficient accuracy to study their effects on global weather and the climate the original idea behind sea whiffs was to monitor the color of the ocean project that we're involved in is called names kind of started from space and worked its way down to the ocean [Music] drop SWAT will give us an unprecedented view of our planet's water [Music] system liftoff of the Falcon 9 and Pace helping keep Pace with our Ever Changing ocean and atmosphere [Music] Earth coming up wow is that pretty we live on an ocean world and to explore our oceans is to uncover our [Music] home Osiris Rex is NASA's first asteroid sample return Mission it launched in September 2016 on a journey to explor anth asteroid called benu after arriving in 2018 Osiris Rex spent nearly 2 years orbiting benu mapping and studying its rugged terrain before carrying out its primary science objective on October 20th 2020 the spacecraft ventured to a small crater in the asteroid's northern hemisphere it dodged Jagged rocks and towering Boulders and plunged its arm into the loose surface Excavating 6 tons of debris while collecting about 250 g of material Osiris Rex stowed its Bounty and closed its sample return capsule it Bid Farewell to benu in May 2021 embarking on a 1.2 billion M Cruise back to Earth now 2 years and 4 months after leaving benu Osiris rexis closing in on the place where its Journey [Music] began on September 24th the spacecraft will approach to nearly 63,000 mi from Earth it will power up and release its sample return capsule at 4:42 a.m. mountain time the capsule must be jettisoned within a narrow time frame and at just the right angle to hit its Target an area of roughly 250 sare mil in Utah's West Desert once the capsule is away Osiris Rex will fire its thrusters to avoid colliding with Earth at 8:42 a.m. the capsule will streak into the atmosphere at a blistering 27,000 mph it will Race Across the Western us and begin to Glow with heat allowing infrared trackers on the ground to chart its progress as it pushes deeper into the atmosphere the capsule will rapidly decelerate subjecting the benu samples to a punishing 32 G's about 2 minutes after entry it will slow to Mach 1.4 and

deploy its drogue parachute stabilizing its descent the capsule will enter special use airspace at 8:46 a.m. almost 10 m above the Department of Defense Utah test and training range radar stations will lock on and track it to within 30 ft of its Landing site at 8:50 a.m. the capsule will extract and deploy its main parachute 1 mile above the ground it will make its final descent at a leisurely 11 mph like a marathon runner savoring a Victory lap before touching down in the desert soil at 855 after ground teams retrieve the capsule the benu samples will be taken to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston Texas the sample canister will be opened in the astom materials acquisition and curation facility and the samples will be curated distributed and studied for decades to come having delivered its cargo the Osiris Rex spacecraft will depart Earth but its Journey will not quite be finished in a daring Encore the renamed Osiris Apex will enter an elliptical orbit of the sun repeatedly passing within the orbit of Venus and pushing ing the limits of its thermal design beginning in 2029 it will chase down and investigate apus a 1200t Stony asteroid destined to make an exceptionally close flyby of Earth after 13 years in deep space at the start of a new decade alone on a new world the journey will continue [Music] [Applause] [Music] you know what really annoys me it's literally only because of my perspective that it is even called an eclipse if I weren't here to see it then it wouldn't even that's so true it's really important to notice that like this is the best time to view the sun I mean there's really no other time that you can see my Corona or outer atmosphere than during an eclipse it's just a shame that a certain natural satellite needs to take up so much of the rest of the view hi I'm Katie merman I'm on goddard's digital team and I make a lot of videos for social media that means lately a lot of videos that are vertical a lot of the videos I make these days are for Instagram reals or YouTube shorts along with being in a vertical format these videos also come with really short time constraints something like 59 seconds for YouTube shorts fortunately for me I already talk really really fast so it's just a matter of how much information I can fit into some of these videos are sort of person forward where I feel myself or someone else often just on my phone sometimes with an Instagram green screen background um my setup at home is literally just my phone on a stand talking into it using the script on my computer as a light um but it works really well and it lets me talk uh fast it lets me try a million times unlike right now where I'm having to say this with people watching me another fun thing about social verse video particularly these short form vertical videos is there's a lot of tolerance to get weird for the total solar eclipse in April I worked with the social media leads for NASA Sun NASA Moon and NASA Earth trying to come up with an interesting way to communicate the science of the solar eclipse we came up with the idea of having all three of them in inflatable costumes as the Sun Moon and Earth dancing around each other getting into fights literally pushing each other around and that's something that maybe wouldn't have made sense for a longer form more serious video but I could film that on my phone in the course of one day and put out four videos just like that we never know what's going to work or not and I hate to admit that as a social media person with lots of metrics at my fingers but the algorithm on these platforms is always changing which means there's always an opportunity to try something new and sometimes it works really well sometimes it doesn't another fun thing about these vertical videos is that they're a little more informal a little less polished and sometimes we don't need to have the highest quality production sorry were you [Music] [Applause] filming so this is a little like little mirror that's aiming at you all the time regardless which way you're looking at it my name is Shi s I'm a lar instrument scientists and also work on other laser instruments the instrument is a laser retro reflector arrays it's a small retro reflectors and mounted on the shell uh on aluminum Shell support shell it retro reflect laser light back to where it came from the purpose is to number one to have a fiducial marker it size fiducial marker on the Lander so that we know exactly where that is on the lunar surface is serve as a landmark for future missions if you want to go back and land it there when you shine laser on it and reflect right back at you so it doesn't matter which way you're looking at it and so that will help us to Ren from orbit to the Lander as you pass overhead [Music] commercial lunar payload Services NASA and American companies work [Music] together we have a number of residents particularly residents living near Warehouse environments that experience poor air quality on a daily basis and when you have a health condition or sensitive you don't want that kind of pollution in your house the best Solutions are data driven when people are given the right data they will make the right decisions for my community and communities across Chicago and the region so NASA has this new initiative and it's called Earth Science to action and part of what we're doing is we want to understand the sources of air pollution and how it gets transported in the atmosphere and the these stakeholders are able to make the air safer to bre ground level ozone it physically burns your lungs NO2 is a toxic gas it is linked with pediatric asthma pm2.5 the small particles you breathe in they're small enough that they can go through your lungs into your bloodstream Tempo stands for tropospheric emissions monitoring of pollution it will measure air pollution over North America every daylight hour this is really going to be a game Cher helping us understand pollution at the neighborhood scale 2 1 ignition full power and 40 go today's is a really exciting day for both NASA and Noah today the tempo satellite started its first scans of North America and we've got three aircraft in the air flying over Chicago you got dozens of instruments on the DCA getting the insitu levels of air pollutants and greenhouse gases and then flying above us right now is the G3 and the G5 with remote sensing payload that's very exciting day historic day we've been waiting over a decade for the tempo instrument to start collecting data you know you build the satellite it takes years to build it and you test it in the lab but you never know if it's going to work uh when you ship it across the country you put it on a rocket you launch it into space and so yesterday we found out that Tempo really is going to be able to measure air quality over North America one of the exciting things about this Aroma Stacks field campaign is it's going to help us calibrate and validate the tempo satellite so while we're flying in uh both the remote sensing and the sensors that are measuring what's in the atmosphere down low Tempo is scanning overhead and so we're going to use that data to help improve the Precision and accuracy of the tempo satellite we're on an Airbase right Patterson Airbase in Dayton Ohio there's Jets taking off and transports taking off and we have hundreds of people here we want to understand the sources of air pollution and how it gets transported in the atmosphere and what's wonderful is we'll work with our partners at EPA and Noah to help make sure that NASA and these stakeholders are able to make the air safer to breathe if there's one takeaway from this Mission what we want to learn is how can satellites help us address air quality issues we have this new asset into space with Tempo um and it'll be operating over the next few years so this is a Pathfinder for us to integrate these types of measurements into air quality decision- making so there's a lot of people that are doing research in the community and as we partner up and put our assets together we can actually do something bigger than any individual uh component could do [Music] alone Uranus is the seventh planet from the sun and the third largest planet in the solar system it also may have the coldest interior emitting far less heat than its counterparts Jupiter Saturn and Neptune it is known as an ice giant because it contains more I including water methane and ammonia than Jupiter or Saturn and while NASA's learned a great deal about this planet over the last three decades there's a lot more waiting to be discovered back in 1986 NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by Uranus making it the first and only spacecraft to visit this distant planet previous observations show that Uranus has a unique tilt of its axis so it rotates almost on its side causing its poles to actually face the sun no other planet in our solar system has this feature in its quick Sprint past Uranus Voyager discovered 10 new moons orbiting the planet that had not been seen before and in the decades since even more have been found during its encounter Voyager also saw new faint rings and explored the complex magnetosphere Voyager only briefly viewed the planet's five major moons Ariel Miranda titanium Oberon and umbal these moons have a wide variety of terrains and geological features some of which indicate possible subsurface oceans small Miranda has chaotic terrain with deep canyons and Tall mountains but is likely now frozen solid aerial appears to have the youngest surface with few impact craters while Titania has a very old surface the lack of large craters and presence of a large canyon system May indicate ancient resurfacing Oberon is also covered with craters and has valleys and large mountains UMO surface is the darkest of the Uranian moons and it Sports a strange polar ring the origin of this ring is still a mystery but scientists believe that it may have been formed by an icy impact since Voyager groundbased telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope have played the leading role in our understanding of Uranus since 1992 Hubble has watched the slowly changing Uranian seasons including changes in its unusual pale blue color and polar hazes telescopes have also revealed that Uranus has a complex weather system with massive storms that can last for months or even years with wind speeds over 500 mph the ongoing search for ocean worlds and life beyond Earth makes Uranus an exciting Target for the James web Space Telescope and for future up close exploration new data will help scientists to understand the formation and evolution of Uranus as well as its moons and rings and provide clues as to whether liquid water May reside beneath their icy crusts the fascinating properties of this planet discovered in just the span of a few decades reveal that unlocking Mysteries here can help scientists learn even more about our solar system and our place in [Music] it when I began with the sraer project we had less than a thousand comets that was over 20 years ago so the fact that we finally reached this Milestone 5,000 comets it's just unbelievable to me sraer project is a project that allows anyone anywhere in the world to sit down with a laptop and discover comets the clue to what a sungrazing comet is kind of in the name there it's literally a comet that grazes by the sun the sun Grazer project relies exclusively on images of the Sun from spacecraft and the images that we discover nearly all of our comets in come from the solar and heliospheric Observatory or Soho that is a satellite that was launched in 1995 so it's been operating for a long time now 3 2 1 ignition and liftoff of Soho and the atlas vehicle on an international mission of solar physics our participants go to the Soho website where we have all of our latest images from the spacecraft and they download those images and it's really as simple as looking through them flicking through the image and looking for something tiny and faint and moving in a different direction to the Stars discovering a comet is a very unique feeling you have this realization that suddenly you found a piece of the solar system a piece of the universe that no one has ever seen before prior to the launch of the Soho Mission and the Su graser project there were only a couple of dozen sungrazing comets on record that's all we knew existed the 5,000 comet Milestone is a huge achievement it's one that none of us dreamed we would even get to so simply the statistics of 5,000 comets and looking at their orbits and trajectories through space is a super unique data set it's a really valuable science and it is just a testament to the countless hours the project participants have put into this we absolutely would not under any circumstance be here if it wasn't for what our project volunteers have done that's really what 5,000 comets represents it's 20 or more years of invaluable discoveries from the project [Music] volunteers what color is the ocean trick question it's all kinds of colors Blues greens Reds yellows and swirls of all of the above and these colors can tell us a lot about what's going on just beneath the surface what's thriving or changing or could pose a threat for over 20 years NASA has been looking at the color of the ocean with technology that's well over 20 years old and that has told us a lot about the health of ocean ecosystems but there are details we just can't see enter Pace the Plankton aerosol Cloud ocean ecosystem Mission Pace's new instruments will look at our world's oceans lakes and rivers in an entire rainbow worth of color and Beyond giving us new insights into Marine communities the carbon cycle and climate studies so let's take a look at the top five official best ever ocean colors of all time this is the open ocean here the oceans absorb the longer red wavelengths and scatters the Blues in these vast stretches of deepest Blues is where the tiniest of bacteria cycle and recycle nutrients in microbial Loops for example the tiniest and most abundant photosynthetic organism prochlorococcus converts carbon dioxide into organic compounds and forms the base of the marine food web these phytoplankton are eaten by tiny zop Plankton and then eaten by larger zanon then smaller fish and so on and then return the nutrients back through respiration and remineralization which are then taken up by the tiny microbes but here is where things are changing these deep blues are getting greener with a warming climate but exactly how and why is unclear despite some scientific theories the past and present satellite sensors just don't have enough sensitivity to color to tease that out Pace will fill in those gaps with higher spectral information and slowly over time be able to discern the drivers associated with these detected changes this appealing brownish orange is the result of what's known as colored dissolved organic matter we can think of it as a kind of tea that leeches out of dead or dying organic matter like the tannins from broken down leaves giving the surrounding water a darker Browner Hue found in higher concentrations in lakes rivers estuaries and marshes color dissolved organic matter is a great proxy for dissolved organic carbon a big pool of carbon in aquatic systems and it's an indicator of the health of an ecosystem much like a cloudy cup of tea higher levels of this organic matter don't let as much light through changing the availability of light for plant-like organisms in the environment with Pace's ocean color instruments hyperspectral measurements even into the ultraviolet wavelengths we'll be able to differentiate sources of this organic matter and better understand the transfer of carbon across land and into coastal regions a grayish green in a large lake like this could spell potential harm from a bloom of blue green algae known as cyanobacteria depending on the type and abundance cyano IIA can spread toxins to Aquatic and human life in 2019 Lake Erie saw a bloom of the microsyst cyanobacteria form a thick layer of scum filled with a toxin which posed a major risk to drinkable water the microcystin toxin can cause liver damage dizziness numbness and vomiting researchers are eager to use the hyperspectral information from Pace in order to detect early stages of harmful algal blooms like the ones in Lake Erie Pace will be able to measure the unique Optical properties of cyanobacteria which will help separate the harmful algae from other phytoplankton present in the water and allow resource managers to monitor the health of fresh water this turquoise stretch tells us a lot about the sediment churning in the water and both the quality and quantity of that sediment can have big impacts on marine life for example in Greenland glaciers can bulldoze over surface rocks grinding them into a fine po of silt and Clay known as glacial flour the glacial flour changes the appearance of the water with the particles absorbing the shorter wavelengths purples and indigos and the water absorbing the longer wavelengths the Reds and oranges this sediment can bring nutrients and fuel algal blooms but if you're an oyster sediments could be a big problem when lots of sediment is suspended in the water filter feeders like oysters can't feed as efficiently and high sediment level can be associated with increased harmful vibrio bacteria which can cause sickness and even death when those oysters are eaten PA's hyperspectral measurements will see far more variability in reflectance and give us better estimates of water Clarity and partical size and that data could be used by oyster Farmers monitoring the health of the shellfish population as the days grow longer in the subpolar regions a Milky swirly light blue hue grows in the the oceans this is The Telltale Mark of copor copor copor a kind of phytoplankton that is completely covered in a chalky shell of calcium carbonate when these Plankton Bloom and then die off that inorganic chalky material sinks to the ocean floor Pace will better observe these particular blooms allowing researchers to account for the amount of carbon calores remove from the atmosphere and sink into the depths of the ocean if all of these colors can tell us what's going on with our ecosystems our health our climate then Pace's enhanced resolution is going to reveal new levels of detail in how humans and water are connected in a changing world [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] la [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] w [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so for complete newbies how does a hot air balloon work it's a great question it's physics simply we heat up the air inside the balloon and that makes it less dense and then that makes it float now what that means though is we can only control up and down the way we fly and the way we navigate is by choosing different layers of air to fly in and I've heard that there is a box the Albuquerque box could you explain what that means certainly it's one of the reasons why Albuquerque is a famous place for ballooning sometimes what happens is at a higher elevation the wind is going to the north and at the surface it's going to the South that's what we call the Albuquerque box sometimes the box works out such that you can fly to the South and go up fly to the North and then come down and fly back south and land right where you took off which is an extraordinary and wonderful accomplishment it's super fun when you can do that so for someone who's never been in a balloon what is it like it's unlike any other form of flying in a balloon you're actually outside right you're standing little basket and there's no windows you're just out there in the air and it's just science right it's buoyancy like I said it's it's Applied Physics but it feels like magic it's a ballooner eclipse oh yeah I love that it's very calm there's no movement no no wind when you're moving you're moving with the wind so you're at equilibrium it feels very calm and peaceful at the same time it's really exciting and it's intense it's this one ful combination of intensity and mellow Serene tranquil Beauty absorbing nature you can never experience that in any other form of [Music] flight conclusion we've come to from that is that there's a significant spherical aeration appears to be present in the Optics and that we should be able to fix it in our insurance program thousands and thousands of people worked on Hubble and by the way if you asked all of those thousands and thousands of people before the launch in April of 1990 what's your 10 biggest concerns about what could go wrong on Hubble I absolutely guarantee you that not one of them would have said spherical aberation or a bad mirror and we have liftoff lift off of the spa Auto Endeavor on an ambitious mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope [Music] spherical aberration is a problem in the surface surface structure of the mirror the mirror is supposed to be ground to a perfect Parabola where all parallel light coming down comes to one Focus ccal aberration is when one part of the mirror is slightly higher or lower than the other and light instead of coming to one Focus from say the edge of the mirror will come over here and then from the center of the mirror will come to focus up here so you get what that does is blur the focus you can almost think of it if if you got bad myopia which you can say our telescope has now and you put your glasses on you can correct totally and get 2020 Vision I'll never forget the day of the fabled press conference at Godard when we had announced to the world that the Hubble was broken and we didn't know if we could fix it and we didn't frankly think we could fix it except just before the press conference Space Telescope science working group bunch of about 20 astronomers s inv Val tuble we're meeting a gter coincidentally that day and I ran into John troward he was a scientist on The Whitefield camera one team the one that was taking all the fuzzy pictures and he called me over to the hallway and said Ed I want to tell you something I said what we can fix this I said come on John what do you mean he said now that we know the prescription of the of the mirror the the the shape the shape is perfect but it's got the wrong shape just like your nearsighted eye now that we know the exact prescription to you know five or 10 decimal points there are four little mirrors inside our new camera that we're building our backup camera called the the Clone the whiff piic 2 clone there are four little called relay mirrors if we reground those with the correction that we know we need in it like glasses for your eyes we can solve the problem internally right away 1993 and we go up to fix it I said are you sure John because I'm going to tell the press this he said I'm positive so during my press conference I gave all the nasty things uh we're not going to be able to take any pictures we're not going to be able to do this however we feel that uh we can characterize the problem the sphere collaboration problem well enough that uh we can take advantage of an insurance policy that we haven't talked much about and it hasn't been in the Press much and that is we started a long time ago to plan a maintenance program that is every three years we plan to go up with the space shuttle uh change out instruments uh change out uh things that broke before launch if you had said what would be success I would say 50% and the whiff pick but the whiff pick had to be co-star by itself I don't think would have made the difference but whiff pick images people aren't going to believe a Spectra think about it would people believe a nice beautiful Spectrum fix the Hubble Space Telescope or a picture of the Eagle Nebula I leave it to the audience you know so that's what I said you know whiff pick and about 50% of the other things and would be happy cuz we've never done this before this is the first time NASA ever tried five Evas more than six hours each and do and did to do all these different things whiff pick uh you know co-star Gyros solar pan I mean we were doing everything except putting in a new kitchen sink so we all fly to Houston the first Eva started of course all these things happen at night but astronomers are usst the night every night it became like a dream sequence because every night that start they' get this done done whiff pick went in next night they got co-star in next night they got gyros in by the end of the fifth night we're looking at each other like are we Dreaming or this happened did we just do five successful Evas and fix everything so we came back from Houston like on top of the world but it was like you know it like you had major eye surgery and the operation was a success but she still had the bandages on and uh we had to take the bandages off some time we're all looking at this monitor when the picture the picture was taken and it was just a real Rich Starfield and what we're hoping not to see is a bunch of fuzzy stars with all kinds of weird Rays coming out of them like they used to be in s collaboration so the image started coming up and this was an old cathol ray tube so it's I know this is technology that some of the young people in the audience I don't know what I'm talking about but it took a while for the image to build up and we first saw a little bright star in the center and then some fainter stars came up more and more stars came up but the and every the you couldn't you could hear a ptin drop you could you could have heard an atom drop on the floor it was so quiet and slowly more and more stars came up and they were sharp and there were lots of them lots of them because when you're out of focus you don't see very faint things when you're in Focus you really see deep and then the picture was there and it was perfect absolutely perfect and there was still a moment of silence and then everybody just went crazy to the bright there it wait bring Bring It come on come on not bad and I can't dve everybody was just hugging each other crying tears you know somebody ran came in with champagne you know it was it was just a moment I'll never forget as long as I live Hubble was fixed total success you couldn't have you couldn't have had had a bigger success in that first servicing Mission when H was launched I always thought that uh you know it would die about I'd have another 10 or 20 years in my career and here I retired 10 years and it's still going yeah it it made me it made me the buttt of jokes it made me uh a collector of arrows slings and arrows from my neighbors the Press thought I was a joke and seeing where Hubble is now making those early promises look like nothing I mean a piece of cake I mean it's it's it's iconic it's the greatest American Scientific achievement ever It's the Great American comeback story we should be able to fix it in our insurance program I think uh we're all committ nobody's walking away I think we're all committed to work on it and do it right [Music] [Applause] I was inspired by everything I learned about at Goddard earth science space science astrophysics geology everything cool about the universe feels like it was happening at Godard not even in my own group I reached out I worked on other missions Mission studying gamma rays Mission studying all kinds of things cosmic rays it was awesome for me and really it was my dream job just watching something that I made go to space was just a complete and total dream come true at the time it's hard to believe that now I'm actually going to be going into deep space myself [Music] pry goodes on we've come a long way in weather forecasting since the early balloon launching days thanks mainly to weather satellites [Music] just 15 years ago this month NASA launched the first tyros weather satellite from Cape Canal the views of earth were pretty rudimentary compared to today's highquality pictures but they proved that routine global weather observation by satellite was possible with each succeeding one these weather Sentinels have become more and more sophisticated [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] for me storytelling has always been the way to reach the heart the stories that you can tell around the images along with the images make something very very [Music] powerful science and Technologies especially satellite imagery are absolutely essential because people livelihood s natural resources and biodiversity are connected to each other satellite imagery are our eyes in the sky providing those insights and upto-date [Music] [Music] information going around the Villages at the beginning of our tuari program helping the villagers understand the importance of conservation and what they deforestation was actually doing to harm them I will never forget when Lilia and I went to one of these Villages and he' acquired one of these huge satellite imagery maps and we laid it out the villagers were sitting around it and their excitement was absolutely fantastic and there was one woman saying that's the tree where I put my baby when I'm working in the fields and another man was saying no we can see our sacred sides this tree and this rock and I remember one woman and she said well I used to do my farming on this Hillside and she pointed to it and she said but then all the trees went away and there was this terrible Landslide which showed on the map you could see where the the mud had slid down and there was no vegetation left on either side so she said now I understand now I know that it's worth walking a whole extra hour in the morning to get to a place where I can cultivate the land without causing this terrible destruction of the [Applause] environment gives me hope the way it gives me hope is it is changing lives and it is also empowering the local voices you find there are people they call themselves like Forest Guardians friends of forest there are people who are becoming you know um tree planting groups more than 80% of biodiversity are in the hands of indigenous people and local communities across the world in Africa on average more than 65% land tenure is in the hands of local communities so if we want to achieve conservation impact and address the climate change we have to work with local communities and not only engage them but empowers them to own and drive decision- making in their Landscapes well the Ki approach began when I flew over the gbi area I flew over an area which in 1960 was part of the Equator iial Forest Bel that stretched right across equatorial Africa to the West Coast by the late ' 80s I flew over in a small plane and I looked down and I saw a tiny island of Forest gombi National Park is very small surrounded by Bare Hills as you know I spent many many years studying chimpanzees when I began there was probably between 1 and two and I'd say closer to 2 million and today 100,000 to 300 and a bit thousand is all that's left many of them are in fragmented environments isolated genetically and have little chance of survival so they are highly endangered and if we don't take action then they will become extinct the NASA satellite data help us understand what does it mean to be a chimp it helped us understand where to protect them NASA supports launches and maintains and manages constellation of different satellites and some of them going all the way back to 1972 by providing this data to the conservation Community it helps us continuously monitor the chimpanzee habitats the chimpanzee habitat suitability model developed with support from NASA univers from Maryland includes more than a dozen variables directly extracted from landet satellite imagery it includes ndvi it includes perent tree canopy cover it includes tree Heights using conservation standards approach in dashboards we take those models and turn them into habitat health indicators into actionable information people on the ground can actually work with and the conditions of the forest can change quite rapidly due to illegal logging mining or any other threats so this information is updated in near real time so that conservation decision makers can see the individual threats affecting chimpanzee habitats from Village to National scales and across the entire chimpanze range in Africa and this NASA data helps identify areas under the threat of illegal logging or fire damage where local managers could be deployed to mitigate the threat in addition mobile apps enable community members to become involved in not just tracking changes in the habitat but to be active in enforcing the protection of the village forest reserves from the gradation community leaders have even used this data to inform the village landu planning voluntary moving Farms away from areas where Forest restoration would lead to the greatest gain for watersheds and [Music] people it works both ways sometimes you show a lush forest and then you show how a few years later it's devastated there just a few burnt stumps but on the other hand there are other images which show you a devastated landscape and then 5 years later trees coming back reach generation New Hope New Life so the stories that you can tell around the images along with the images make something very very powerful and you need both to make the kind of impact that we need to make today to help people understand the devastation we've caused but to give them hope that we can turn things around and that's what these satellite images show so clearly I'm convinced that we have planted a seed that is going to spread and this is a very good way of trying to ensure our contribution to the mother Planet my future is a future where technology is married to compassion and love oh [Music]

2024-07-22 02:31

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