Episode description:
There’s one planet NASA studies more than any other: Earth. With our unique vantage point from space, NASA collects information about our home in ways nobody else can. In this podcast miniseries, celebrate our home planet by learning how NASA studies Earth—including unique views of ocean color and sea level, land data that helps farmers improve crop production, and researching our atmosphere from the air we breathe to layers high above us that protect every living thing on the planet.
[Music: Unraveling Minds Underscore by Telegra]
Jacob Pinter: Here at NASA, we’ve landed on the Moon…
Apollo 11 video: That’s one small step for man…
Padi Boyd: We’ve driven robots across Martian craters…
Perseverance touchdown video: Touchdown confirmed. Perseverance is safely on the surface of Mars, ready to begin seeking the signs of past life.
Jacob: And we’ve peered into the depths of time and space…
JWST launch video: Décollage, liftoff, from a tropical rainforest to the edge of time itself, James Webb begins a voyage back to the birth of the universe…
Padi: But you don’t have to look far to find an amazing, mysterious place. That’s why we also study… Earth.
Karen St. Germain: Well, there’s a lot we don’t understand about our home planet. We understand, I would argue, more about the surface of the Moon than we do about how our oceans work.
Jacob: I’m Jacob Pinter. Over billions of years, this average, rocky planet developed a breathable atmosphere and oceans… And unlike on any other planet we know of… life sprung up here.
Padi: I’m Padi Boyd. From the vantage point of space, our Earth is a fragile blue marble… A place worth understanding and protecting.
Karen: When an astronaut gets to space outside of our atmosphere and they look around…
Suni Williams video: Uh, first of all, the view never gets old.
Karen: …it looks cold and deep and dark. And the Earth…
Suni Williams video: This is our one little planet that all of us are living on…
Karen: …looks like this beautiful gem.
Anne McClain video: All of everything that you’ve ever known and every person that you’ve been close to and every experience you’ve ever had in one glimpse of the eye.
Jacob: So, how does our living Earth work? And what makes it so unique? For decades here at NASA, we’ve been trying to understand our home… from the air, the sea, the ground, and mostly from satellites orbiting high above the surface.
Karen: We use the same kinds of science to understand the Earth’s atmosphere and environment as we would use to understand what would have to happen for humans to live on Mars.
Brad Doorn: A lot of our initial mapping technologies on how to map topography came from mapping the Moon. NASA data is unique. NASA observations and systems monitor the globe all the time. Always on, have been for decades. No one else does that.
Padi: So, this spring on Curious Universe, we’re exploring Earth the way only NASA can…
Jacob: In this series, we’re telling the story of NASA Earth Science. We’ll dive into our colorful oceans…
[Music: Vertical Rise Instrumental by Handels]
[SFX: Waves crashing on a beach]
Cecile Rousseaux: We very often forget that the oceans are there, and they tend to be a bit in the background, but their role is so critical to us being alive on this planet, right?
Josh Willis: A single yardstick isn’t quite enough. You really have to measure it everywhere in the world if you wanna see how the whole ocean and the whole climate is changing. And that’s what we do with satellites.
Padi: You’ll hear why NASA doesn’t just collect data. We share it with people who need it… like American farmers.
[SFX: Sheep bleating on a farm]
Brad: We’ve had drought after drought, we have a lot more demand on water, less predictable rainfall. You’re not gonna get a sustainable solution to those types of big issues without NASA.
Jacob: And go inside decades of research studying Earth’s atmosphere … from the air we breathe… to layers high above us that protect every living thing on the planet.
Padi: Celebrate our home planet… with a special miniseries of NASA’s Curious Universe. Coming soon… right here in your podcast feed.
Jacob: Welcome… to Earth.