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NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) observatory and PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) satellites lift off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on March 11, 2025.Credit: SpaceX NASA’s newest astrophysics observatory, SPHEREx, is on its way to study the origins of our universe and the history of galaxies, and to search for the ingredients of life in our galaxy. Short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, SPHEREx lifted off at 8:10 p.m. PDT on March 11 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
Riding with SPHEREx aboard the Falcon 9 were four small satellites that make up the agency’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission, which will study how the Sun’s outer atmosphere becomes the solar wind.
“Everything in NASA science is interconnected, and sending both SPHEREx and PUNCH up on a single rocket doubles the opportunities to do incredible science in space,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Congratulations to both mission teams as they explore the cosmos from far-out galaxies to our neighborhood star. I am excited to see the data returned in the years to come.”
Ground controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages SPHEREx, established communications with the space observatory at 9:31 p.m. PDT. The observatory will begin its two-year prime mission after a roughly one-month checkout period, during which engineers and scientists will make sure the spacecraft is working properly.
“The fact our amazing SPHEREx team kept this mission on track even as the Southern California wildfires swept through our community is a testament to their remarkable commitment to deepening humanity’s understanding of our universe,” said Laurie Leshin, director, NASA JPL. “We now eagerly await the scientific breakthroughs from SPHEREx’s all-sky survey — including insights into how the universe began and where the ingredients of life reside.”
The PUNCH satellites successfully separated about 53 minutes after launch, and ground controllers have established communication with all four PUNCH spacecraft. Now, PUNCH begins a 90-day commissioning period where the four satellites will enter the correct orbital formation, and the instruments will be calibrated as a single “virtual instrument” before the scientists start to analyze images of the solar wind.
The two missions are designed to operate in a low Earth, Sun-synchronous orbit over the day-night line (also known as the terminator) so the Sun always remains in the same position relative to the spacecraft. This is essential for SPHEREx to keep its telescope shielded from the Sun’s light and heat (both would inhibit its observations) and for PUNCH to have a clear view in all directions around the Sun.
To achieve its wide-ranging science goals, SPHEREx will create a 3D map of the entire celestial sky every six months, providing a wide perspective to complement the work of space telescopes that observe smaller sections of the sky in more detail, such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope.
The mission will use a technique called spectroscopy to measure the distance to 450 million galaxies in the nearby universe. Their large-scale distribution was subtly influenced by an event that took place almost 14 billion years ago known as inflation, which caused the universe to expand in size a trillion-trillionfold in a fraction of a second after the big bang. The mission also will measure the total collective glow of all the galaxies in the universe, providing new insights about how galaxies have formed and evolved over cosmic time.
Spectroscopy also can reveal the composition of cosmic objects, and SPHEREx will survey our home galaxy for hidden reservoirs of frozen water ice and other molecules, like carbon dioxide, that are essential to life as we know it.
“Questions like ‘How did we get here?’ and ‘Are we alone?’ have been asked by humans for all of history,” said James Fanson, SPHEREx project manager at JPL. “I think it’s incredible that we are alive at a time when we have the scientific tools to actually start to answer them.”
NASA’s PUNCH will make global, 3D observations of the inner solar system and the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, to learn how its mass and energy become the solar wind, a stream of charged particles blowing outward from the Sun in all directions. The mission will explore the formation and evolution of space weather events such as coronal mass ejections, which can create storms of energetic particle radiation that can endanger spacecraft and astronauts.
“The space between planets is not an empty void. It’s full of turbulent solar wind that washes over Earth,” said Craig DeForest, the mission’s principal investigator, at the Southwest Research Institute. “The PUNCH mission is designed to answer basic questions about how stars like our Sun produce stellar winds, and how they give rise to dangerous space weather events right here on Earth.”
More About SPHEREx, PUNCH
The SPHEREx mission is managed by NASA JPL for the agency’s Astrophysics Division within the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. BAE Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace) built the telescope and the spacecraft bus. The science analysis of the SPHEREx data will be conducted by a team of scientists located at 10 institutions in the U.S., two in South Korea, and one in Taiwan. Data will be processed and archived at IPAC at Caltech, which manages JPL for NASA. The mission’s principal investigator is based at Caltech with a joint JPL appointment. The SPHEREx dataset will be publicly available at the NASA-IPAC Infrared Science Archive.
Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) leads the PUNCH mission and built the four spacecraft and Wide Field Imager instruments at its headquarters in San Antonio, Texas. The Narrow Field Imager instrument was built by the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington. The mission is operated from SwRI’s offices in Boulder, Colorado, and is managed by the Explorers Program Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
NASA’s Launch Services Program, based out of the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, provided the launch service for SPHEREx and PUNCH.
For more about NASA’s science missions, visit:
http://science.nasa.gov
-end-
Alise Fisher
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-2546
alise.m.fisher@nasa.gov
Calla Cofield – SPHEREx
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-808-2469
calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov
Sarah Frazier – PUNCH
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
202-853-7191
sarah.frazier@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Mar 12, 2025 EditorJessica TaveauLocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe and Ices Explorer) Astrophysics Heliophysics Launch Services Program Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) Science Mission Directorate View the full article
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By NASA
6 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Risks Concept Risk is inherent in human spaceflight. However, specific risks can and should be understood, managed, and mitigated to reduce threats posed to astronauts. Risk management in the context of human spaceflight can be viewed as a trade-based system. The relevant evidence in life sciences, medicine, and engineering is tracked and evaluated to identify ways to minimize overall risk to the astronauts and to ensure mission success. The Human System Risk Board (HSRB) manages the process by which scientific evidence is utilized to establish and reassess the postures of the various risks to the Human System during all of the various types of existing or anticipated crewed missions. The HSRB operates as part of the Health and Medical Technical Authority of the Office of the Chief Health and Medical Officer of NASA via the JSC Chief Medical Officer.
The HSRB approaches to human system risks is analogous to the approach the engineering profession takes with its Failure Mode and Effects Analysis in that a process is utilized to identify and address potential problems, or failures to reduce their likelihood and severity. In the context of risks to the human system, the HSRB considers eight missions which different in their destinations and durations (known as Design Reference Missions [DRM]) to further refine the context of the risks. With each DRM a likelihood and consequence are assigned to each risk which is adjusted scientific evidence is accumulated and understanding of the risk is enhanced, and mitigations become available or are advanced.
Human System Risks This framework enables the principles of Continuous Risk Management and Risk Informed Decision Making (RIDM) to be applied in an ongoing fashion to the challenges posed by Human System Risks. Using this framework consistently across the 29 risks allows management to see where risks need additional research or technology development to be mitigated or monitored and for the identification of new risks and concerns. Further information on the implementation of the risk management process can be found in the following documents:
Human System Risk Management Plan – JSC-66705 NASA Health and Medical Technical Authority (HMTA) Implementation – NPR 7120.11A NASA Space Flight Program and Project Management Requirements – NPR 7120.5 Human System Risk Board Management Office
The HSRB Risk Management Office governs the execution of the Human System Risk management process in support of the HSRB. It is led by the HSRB Chair, who is also referred to as the Risk Manager.
Risk Custodian Teams
Along with the Human System Risk Manager, a team of risk custodians (a researcher, an operational researcher or physician, and an epidemiologist, who each have specific expertise) works together to understand and synthesize scientific and operational evidence in the context of spaceflight, identify and evaluate metrics for each risk in order to communicate the risk posture to the agency.
Directed Acyclic Graphs
Summary
The HSRB uses Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAG), a type of causal diagramming, as visual tools to create a shared understanding of the risks, improve communication among those stakeholders, and enable the creation of a composite risk network that is vetted by members of the NASA community and configuration managed (Antonsen et al., NASA/TM– 20220006812). The knowledge captured is the Human Health and Performance community’s knowledge about the causal flow of a human system risk, and the relationships that exist between the contributing factors to that risk.
DAGs are:
Intended to improve communication between: Managers and subject matter experts who need to discuss human system risks Subject matter experts in different disciplines where human system risks interact with one another in a potentially cumulative fashion Visual representations of known or suspected relationships Directed – the relationship flows in one direction between any two nodes Acyclic – cycles in the graph are not allowed Example of a Directed Acyclic Graph. This is a simplified illustration of how and the individual, the crew, and the system contribute to the likelihood of successful task performance in a mission. Individual readiness is affected by many of the health and performance-oriented risks followed by the HSRB, but the readiness of any individual crew is complemented by the team and the system that the crew works within. Failures of task performance may lead to loss of mission objectives if severe.NASA View Larger (Example of a Directed Acyclic Graph) Image
Details
At NASA, the Human System Risks have historically been conceptualized as deriving from five Hazards present in the spaceflight environment. These are: altered gravity, isolation and confinement, radiation, a hostile closed environment, and distance from Earth. These Hazards are aspects of the spaceflight environment that are encountered when someone is launched into space and therefore are the starting point for causal diagramming of spaceflight-related risk issues for the HSRB.
These Hazards are often interpreted in relation to physiologic changes that occur in humans as a result of the exposure; however, interaction between human crew (behavioral health and performance), which may be degraded due to the spaceflight environment – and the vehicle and mission systems that the crew must operate – can also be influenced by these Hazards.
Each Human System Risk DAG is intended to show the causal flow of risk from Hazards to Mission Level Outcomes. As such, the structure of each DAG starts with at least one Hazard and ends with at least one of the pre-defined Mission Level Outcomes. In between are the nodes and edges of the causal flow diagrams that are relevant to the Risk under consideration. These are called ‘contributing factors’ in the HSRB terminology, and include countermeasures, medical conditions, and other Human System Risks. A graph data structure is composed of a set of vertices (nodes), and a set of edges (links). Each edge represents a relationship between two nodes. There can be two types of relationships between nodes: directed and undirected. For example, if an edge exists between two nodes A and B and the edge is undirected, it is represented as A–B, (no arrow). If the edge were directed, for example from A to B, then this is represented with an arrow (A->B). Each directed arrow connecting one node to another on a DAG indicates a claim of causality. A directed graph can potentially contain a cycle, meaning that, from a specific node, there exists a path that would eventually return to that node. A directed graph that has no cycles is known as acyclic. Thus, a graph with directed links and no cycles is a DAG. DAGs are a type of network diagram that represent causality in a visual format.
DAGs are updated with the regular Human System Risk updates generally every 1-2 years. Approved DAGs can be found in the NASA/TP 20220015709 below or broken down under each Human System Risk.
Documents
Directed Acyclic Graph Guidance Documentation – NASA/TM 20220006812 Directed Acyclic Graphs: A Tool for Understanding the NASA Human Spaceflight System Risks – NASA/TP 20220015709 Publications
npj Microgravity – Causal diagramming for assessing human
system risk in spaceflight
Apr 22, 2024
PDF (3.09 MB)
npj Microgravity –
Levels of evidence for human system risk
evaluation
Apr 22, 2024
PDF (2.47 MB)
npj Microgravity –
Updates to the NASA human system risk management process
for space exploration
Apr 22, 2024
PDF (2.24 MB)
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Last Updated Mar 11, 2025 EditorRobert E. LewisLocationJohnson Space Center Related Terms
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA astronaut Douglas Hurley is helped out of the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft onboard the SpaceX GO Navigator recovery ship after he and NASA astronaut Robert Behnken landed in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Florida, Sunday, Aug. 2, 2020. The Demo-2 test flight for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program was the first to deliver astronauts to the International Space Station and return them safely to Earth onboard a commercially built and operated spacecraft. Behnken and Hurley returned after spending 64 days in space. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)NASA New spacecraft that will transport crews to the Lunar and Martian surfaces and return them to Earth may have diverse landing modalities which will function in different landing environments. Additionally, the crew may be deconditioned on landing, impacting their ability to independently egress the vehicles, perform post-landing tasks in a timely manner, and perform surface EVAs post-landing -including those required for emergencies.
Boeing and NASA teams work around Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft after it landed at White Sands Missile Range’s Space Harbor, Wednesday, May 25, 2022, in New Mexico. Boeing’s Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) is Starliner’s second uncrewed flight test to the International Space Station as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. OFT-2 serves as an end-to-end test of the system’s capabilities. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls) Directed Acyclic Graph Files
+ DAG File Information (HSRB Home Page)
+ Crew Egress Risk DAG and Narrative (PDF)
+ Crew Egress Risk DAG Code (TXT)
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Last Updated Mar 11, 2025 EditorRobert E. LewisLocationJohnson Space Center Related Terms
Human Health and Performance Human System Risks Explore More
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Explore This Section Earth Home Earth Observer Home Editor’s Corner Feature Articles Meeting Summaries News Science in the News Calendars In Memoriam More Archives 27 min read
Summary of Special Engage Session on “Remote Sensing and the Future of Earth Observations”
Introduction
On October 16, 2024, a special session of the NASA Goddard Engage series took place in the Goett Auditorium (Building 3) at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). The Engage series is intended to explain work at GSFC in an immersive and nontechnical setting. GSFC’s Office of Communications, Earth Sciences Division, and Scientific Colloquium organized this special session.
The featured speaker for this event was The Honorable Al Gore [former Vice President of the U.S.], who has a long history of advocating for the environment and raising public awareness of the worsening “climate crisis” – having received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
The event also featured a panel discussion called “Remote Sensing and the Future of Earth Observations.” Three distinguished scientists spoke about what drew their interest in Earth science and responded to questions from the moderator and the in-person and online audience.
Editor’s Note: This is not intended to be a comprehensive review of all NASA’s future plans regarding Earth Remote Sensing. Rather the panelists focused on some specific activities on which they had expertise that was intended to give a sense of the full suite of activities planned for the coming decade.
While The Earth Observer typically does not usually report on Center-specific events, the newsletter makes an exception for this event because the former Vice President participated – and because the topic of the panel discussion is directly relevant to this publications’ wider audience. The remainder of this article summarizes the Engage session, including Gore’s remarks, the panel discussion, and the question-and-answer (Q&A) session that followed. A YouTube video of the full event is available for viewing.
Opening Remarks
Dalia Kirschbaum [GSFC—Director of Earth Sciences Division] welcomed the participants – both in-person and virtual. Casey Swails [NASA Headquarters—Deputy Associate Administrator] continued by thanking Gore for being one of most influential voices in the U.S. on climate . She said that Gore’s words and actions have inspired much more than just the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) mission. NASA – and GSFC in particular – has been conducting environmental studies since its beginning. She named historical missions, such as Vanguard, the Television Infrared Observation Satellite (TIROS), Landsat (partnership with U.S. Geological Service), and the Earth Observing System (EOS) – including more than 20 years of observations from the three Flagship Missions: Terra, Aqua, and Aura. (The Earth Observer’s Archives Page includes a “Bibliography of Articles with Historical Content” in which links to articles written on most of the missions mentioned in the previous sentence can be found.)
Swails pointed out that GSFC is home to the largest population of Earth Scientists who produce more than 400 journal articles each year.
“It will be you and your successors who will also make NASA (GSFC) the future of Earth observations,” said Swails. “You are continuing to accelerate core science research and enable action through the newly established Earth System Observatory project office, the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) project office, and new flagship missions, such as the Atmospheric Observing System (AOS) and Landsat Next.”
On behalf of – at the time of the meeting – NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, Swails thanked Gore for participating in the Engage event, and she thanked all the scientists and engineers – past and present – that have led the way in making NASA (GSFC) a leader in Earth observations for more than six decades.
Featured Speaker: The Honorable Al Gore
Kirschbaum then introduced Al Gore – shown in Photo 1 – whom she described as an environmental advocate and a central figure in advancing public discourse on climate and sustainability. Following Gore’s many years of political service, he confronted the world with “An Inconvenient Truth,” a documentary on climate change that helped raise global awareness of the worsening state of Earth’s climate. For these efforts, Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize on October 12, 2007.
Photo 1. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore was the featured speaker at the Engage session on October 16, 2024. In addition to overall discussion of NASA’s Earth observing fleet and how Earth observations are used to investigate Earth’s changing climate, Gore’s remarks included reminiscences about his involvement in the Triana mission, which NASA canceled, then later revived and revised becoming known as DSCOVR – a NASA–NOAA partnership. See related article, “Summary of the 10th DSCOVR EPIC and NISTAR Science Team Meeting,” to learn more about DSCOVR and its scientific achievements over a decade in space. Photo credit: Travis Wohlrab [NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)] Kirschbaum continued that Gore played a pivotal role in inspiring Triana , a NASA Earth science mission that would provide a near continuous view of Earth and measure Earth’s complete albedo while orbiting the first Sun–Earth Lagrange Point (hereinafter referred to as “the L1 point”). While Triana was canceled, the concept would live on and ultimately transition into the NASA–NOAA DSCOVR mission, which celebrates the 10th anniversary of its launch in February 2025. Gore made brief remarks at the opening session of the 10th DSCOVR Science Team meeting earlier in the day before coming to this meeting. A full “Summary of the 10th DSCOVR EPIC/ NISTAR Science Team Meeting” is published as a separate article in The Earth Observer.
Gore began by thanking all who worked on DSCOVR and other missions at NASA and NOAA. He thanked Makenize Lystrup [GSFC—Center Director] and the team for welcoming him. He also acknowledged the DSCOVR project leaders from GSFC: Adam Szabo [DSCOVR Project Scientist (PS)], Alexander Marshak [DSCOVR Deputy PS], Jay Herman [Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) Instrument Scientist], Richard Eckman [National Institutes of Health’s Advanced Radiometer (NISTAR) Instrument Scientist], and all those who worked on the mission.
Gore reminisced about when the Triana mission was put into storage in 2001. He remembered his former Senate colleague, Barbara Mikulski [longtime MD Senator] assuring him that they would “feed [the satellite] space snacks” and take care of it until it was ready to use – which ultimately happened in 2008. He also acknowledged those who’ve worked on the DSCOVR mission since launch to extend its capabilities. He also recognized Francisco Valero [former Triana Principal Investigator] who was at University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the time, and was integral in championing the first iteration of this mission (i.e., Triana), as well as Alan Lazarus [Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)—Research Scientist], who helped design DSCOVR’s solar particle sensor. (Jay Herman was also involved in Triana.) He also mentioned how Bill Nelson chaired the House Space Subcommittee contemporaneously to when Gore chaired the Senate Space Subcommittee.
Gore acknowledged that DSCOVR is just one member of NASA’s fleet of Earth observing satellites – see Figure 1 er– plus those of domestic and international partners. What’s unique about DSCOVR, however, is its location – orbiting the L1 point, nearly one million miles (1.1 million km) away from Earth.
Figure 1. [Top] NASA’s Earth Observing Fleet consists of over 20 satellite missions that, with one exception, continuously monitor our home planet from polar or low Earth orbit – including several installed on the International Space Station. The exception is the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) which orbits the first Earth–Sun Lagrange point in the Earth–Sun system [bottom], about 1 million mi (~1.1 million km) from Earth [bottom]. This gives the mission’s two Earth-observing instruments (EPIC and NISTAR) a unique vantage point for observing the full sunlit Earth. [Bottom] Some version of the placeholder diagram above showing DSCOVR orbiting the L1 point between Sun and Earth, 1 million miles from Earth. Figure credit: TBD It can be argued that the modern environmental movement – which resulted in the development NASA’s Earth Observing System and other Earth observing missions – was inspired by a single image – “Earthrise,” which NASA Astronaut Bill Anders took of Earth on Christmas Eve 1968 during the Apollo 8 mission. The adage that “a picture is worth 1000 words” proved true in this instance as this single image changed how society viewed Earth, opening society’s awareness to the fragility and beauty of our home planet. Four years later, on Christmas Eve 1972, the first “Blue Marble” image was released, having been taken by Apollo-12 astronauts, as the spacecraft approached the Moon. (The image inspired subsequent “Blue Marble” images created using composites of satellite data.)
Per the Wikipedia page linked above, “The [Blue Marble image] has been identified as one of the most widely publicized and influential images since its release – particularly in the advocacy for environmental protection.”
Gore mentioned this in his remarks and stressed that this iconic image helped inspire the Triana/DSCOVR concept. This mission has helped scientists develop a more “complete picture” of Earth. He noted that today, DSCOVR/EPIC obtains a new “Blue Marble” (i.e. a full-disc image of Earth) every fifteen minutes – e.g., a set of images of Africa obtained on the 50th anniversary to mimic the original image from Apollo 12. Gore said that we learn so much about Earth from observing it from above (e.g., cloud dynamics, heating, vegetation, and the concentrations of ozone, sulfur dioxide, and particulate matter in the atmosphere). More than 100 peer-reviewed papers have been published on the unique science done at the L1 point by DSCOVR.
Gore said that DSCOVR – along with the rest of NASA’s Earth observing fleet – has produced a treasure trove of information that makes it possible to make the invisible, visible. What was once a mystery can now be explained with scientific data. When DSCOVR was proposed in 1998, the scientific community was on the verge of a technological explosion via the Internet that would allow the collection, storage, processing, and display of untold mountains of information about Earth. It has now evolved even further with the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI), leading to another potential information explosion just at the time when having such information is crucial.
“We are in the midst of a violent collision between our current society’s organization and the surprisingly fragile ecological systems on which human flourishing depends,” said Gore.
As the participants convened to celebrate the 10th anniversary of DSCOVR, he encouraged those present to think about how this data can be applied to address the incredible challenges of our generation – chief among them the Earth’s rapidly changing climate.
“It’s hard to grapple with just how serious the [situation] is,” said Gore. However, he noted that, “Mother nature is a persuasive advocate. She has our attention!”
He cited the two hurricanes – Helene and Milton – that impacted the U.S. in the weeks prior to this event. Despite the ever-present threat, Gore also pointed to the problematic “assault on funding” for science throughout the Federal budget. To address this need, Gore spoke of the growing need for private–public partnerships to address the imposing climate crisis.
Gore discussed how Climate TRACE, the organization he cofounded, is harnessing NASA data and fusing it with other sources to pinpoint the sources of GHGs. Climate TRACE has determined the 500 million most relevant point sources, along with metadate (data describing the data). In essence, Climate TRACE seeks to reverse-engineer the GHG levels based on other environmental variables. He said that the newest Climate TRACE dataset will be released on November 14, 2024 at COP-29. Gore acknowledged that NASA [Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)] contributes data and conducts analysis of data used in Climate TRACE.
Quoting Lord Kelvin, Gore said, “you can only manage what you measure,” noting that our society has been having trouble managing global warming to date. However, thanks to organizations like NASA, our society is gaining the ability to measure it accurately.
Gore then referenced John F. Kennedy’s famous speech at Rice University in 1961 that is most remembered for the line about “going to the Moon in this decade.” But in that speech Kennedy also said, “We set sail on this new sea, because there is new knowledge to be gained and new rights to be won. And they must be won and used for the progress of all people.”
Gore applied this quote to the ongoing study of Earth’s climate. He said that our society is continuing to “sail on this new sea.” He gave kudos to all the people at NASA who are seizing all the opportunities to gather and reflect on “new knowledge” and apply it to issues directly relevant to societal flourishing.
Gore concluded by saying that the DSCOVR mission is a great example of combining scientific discovery and public enlightenment. It has been incredibly successful, and he feels it should be extended, counting on scientists to expand our access to the knowledge we need to ensure the survival of human civilization.
“If you ever doubt we have the political will to make changes,” said Gore, “just remember that political will is itself a renewable resource.”
After a standing ovation from the audience, Kirschbaum thanked Gore for his remarks and his continued support of the Earth science community.
Panel Discussion on the Future of Earth Science Remote Sensing
Kirschbaum then transitioned to the panel discussion. She reflected on how we live with the impacts of climate every day – e.g., air quality impacting students, hurricanes impacting coastlines and coastal communities, shifting storm patterns impacting farmers.
Since its inception in 1958, NASA has been a leader in studying Earth. The agency makes critical observations from space, aircraft, and the ground to understand climate change. NASA researchers integrate this information into climate models to understand the past, represent the present, and project the future state of our home planet.
Kirschbaum said that today’s panel discussion focuses on the future. While questions remain, she emphasized that the agency works with partners on opportunities to do things differently and open new possibilities. She then introduced three NASA scientists, who also provide leadership beyond the walls of NASA.
Miguel Román[GSFC Earth Sciences Division—Deputy Director for Atmospheres]; Lesley Ott [GSFC—Project Scientist for the U.S. Greenhouse Gas Center]; and John Bolten [GSFC—Chief of Hydrological Sciences Branch]. She asked each panelist – shown in Photo 2 – to start with by sharing a bit of their story with the audience to give some initial insights into their work and background on how they themselves became interested in studying climate.
Photo 2. Following Gore’s remarks, there was a panel discussion entitled “Remote Sensing and the Future of Earth Observations.” Dalia Kirschbaum [GSFC—Director of Earth Sciences Division – left] moderated the discussion, directing questions to the three panelists seated to her right [left to right]: Miguel Román [GSFC Earth Sciences Division—Deputy Director for Atmospheres]; Lesley Ott [GSFC—Project Scientist for the U.S. Greenhouse Gas Center]; and John Bolten [GSFC—Chief of Hydrological Sciences Branch]. Photo credit: Travis Wohlrab Román began his career as an intern at NASA. After rising through the ranks, he left NASA to work in private industry before recently returning to GSFC. Originally from Puerto Rico, Román has been “inside the walls of a hurricane six times in his life.” He said that American citizens are increasingly experiencing what he experienced as a youth. He noted that two things happen when one in the middle of a hurricane – barometric pressure drops (ears pop) and there is a distinctive hissing sound.
Román said the term hurricane is derived from a Taino word. He explained that in Puerto Rican folklore, Juracán (i.e., the “evil” Goddess of wind – especially hurricanes) was in opposition to Yucahu (i.e., the “good” God of creation, agriculture, peace, and tranquility).
“The hissing winds of Juracán now reverberate across Florida, “ said Román—see Figure 2.
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Figure 2. Animation of brightness temperature data obtained by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on NASA’s Aqua mission, showing Hurricane Milton as it approached and impacted Florida in October 2024. Colder temperatures (blues) are associated with the tops of high clouds, so the storm track stands out from the warmer temperature over the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
Figure credit: TBD
He stressed that these winds are “different” – more intense – than the ones dealt with in the past. He added that we now have “land hurricanes” – called derechos, which are intense, widespread, and fast-moving lines of storms.
Ott said that, in a sense, “science chose her.” She was raised by two scientists who met while studying physics. But she chose to study meteorology because it seemed to her to be the most ‘personal’ of the sciences. As Kirschbaum alluded to in her remarks earlier, weather impacts us all – physically and even emotionally. She loved this aspect of weather and wanted to understand the science behind the “air that we all swim in.”
“Weather seems to be less in background and more on the ‘front page’ these days,” said Ott. “We regularly hear news stories about superstorms and devastating fires. We’re all increasingly impacted by extreme weather.”
She also spoke about the ‘untold’ costs of climate change (e.g., lost school days, lost wages, not knowing if your home will survive a natural disaster), which has impacted how Ott practices meteorology. While she is a meteorologist, Ott doesn’t work on weather prediction. Instead, she uses the same kind of predictive models that are used for weather forecasting to focus on GHGs, which could help society navigate the realities of a changing planet.
In her work, Ott tracks how climate changes – for better or worse. While the trend toward a warming world (climate) fuels more frequent and powerful extreme events (weather), e.g., heat waves, droughts, and storms, there are exceptions achieved through intentional human intervention – e.g., the recovery of the ozone hole (bought about through enforcement of the Montreal Protocol and its Amendments) and improvements of air quality. Both of these examples of positive change illustrate the value of international collaboration to address environmental issues. Ott said that research efforts can help to “track the future of the planet,” leading to more positive changes. Extending these positive changes to GHGs will help communities more effectively plan for and respond to a rapidly changing world.
Bolten began by saying that he comes from Wood County WV and is the youngest of five boys. He could see the Ohio River from his kitchen window where he swam and canoed. Bolten explained that Wood County is in an area known as chemical valley, because a large number of chemical plants in the region provide important products for the world. These plants employ many of the people living in the region.
Bolten’s father designed wastewater treatment systems for these chemical plants and passed along a deep appreciation of the impact humans can have on the environment. Similarly, Bolten spent many years enjoying the Ohio River and West Virginia wilderness, which instilled in him the value of protecting our freshwater resources. He grew up immersed in the environment and wanted to contribute to the greater good of society and make a positive difference in the world. He said that NASA is championing these same core values as an innovator and leader in Earth System Science. Bolten thanked Gore for spurring public discourse around climate.
Question and Answer Session
Kirschbaum began the Q&A session with several prepared questions followed by questions from both in-person and virtual participants – along with some more interspersed comments from the guest of honor.
Kirschbaum posed the first question to Román: How do you see GSFC (NASA) advancements in tech and science helping us to predict extreme weather (e.g., heatwaves and hurricanes)?
Román began his answer by stating that NASA’s EOS era is coming to an end – after more than two decades of observations. NASA’s EOS flagship missions – Terra, Aqua, and Aura – have each far exceeded their scheduled mission life. While scientists and engineers work together to extend the function as long as possible, practical realities (e.g., fuel supply, orbit decay) dictate that all the satellites must be decommissioned in the next few years. The EOS era has taught NASA and its partners many lessons about how to operate under what he described as “an accelerated set of extreme climate events.”
“We simply could not have anticipated some of things we’re facing now when the EOS missions were designed,” said Ramon, citing the development of derechos and the rapid intensification of tropical cyclones.
The EOS mission instrument teams developed a whole Earth observing technology toolbox on the fly. For example, scientists learned that while microwave sounders work well over water, these instruments face challenges over land due to surface emissivity variations. Infrared (IR) sounders, on the other hand, provide valuable data over all surfaces during clear conditions, but they can’t penetrate thick clouds. Investigators combined both measurements, producing a powerful tool for observing the changing Earth system and beginning to quantify the impact of those changes.
While it is sad to see the EOS era end, Román said that NASA is entering an exciting new era where new technologies will allow for miniaturization of sounders. He also mentioned new observing technologies, such as the Hyperspectral Microwave Photonic Instrument (HyMPI) . The microwave sounders currently flying – which are part of NASA’s current Program of Record – retrieve atmospheric profiles with approximately 20 vertical layers. By contrast, HyMPI can produce as many as 1000 layers, offering enhanced thermodynamic sounding skill in the Earth’s planetary boundary layer (PBL) – the first 2 km (~1 mi) of the atmosphere – over conventional microwave sounders from the current Program of Record.
Román emphasized that the PBL is an area that is still poorly observed and understood. This lowest level of the atmosphere is where humans and other plants and animals live – and where most climate impacts occur. It is thus vitally important to improve our understanding of the PBL. To emphasize this point, Román cited that one million stillbirths can be linked to tropospheric ozone pollution every year. The encouraging news is that NASA’s data can inform public health policy to help mitigate these harmful impacts.
“The problem is an integrated one,” said Román, “and the Earth System Observatory (ESO) is designed for all of its missions to be integrated.”
Román stressed that the climate challenges are complex, and ESO provides a model for all future campaigns to integrate many approaches to solve big problems.
Kirschbaum directed the next question to Ott: As the NASA leader of the U.S. Greenhouse Gas Center, where do you see NASA making contributions?
Ott responded that there has been tremendous innovation and advancement in the field of Earth observations over the past several decades – i.e., during the EOS era. As Al Gore alluded to in his earlier remarks, increasingly, this innovation comes from the pairing of private sector with the public data from satellites, aircraft campaigns, and ground networks that provide the infrastructure that companies need to test and improve new approaches.
NASA has also played a foundational role in developing the systems approach to studying Earth. For example, half of human-produced emissions (sources) of carbon dioxide (CO2) are absorbed by vegetation and the ocean (sinks). It remains unclear how long this balance will continue, however. NASA aims to bring together different measurements of vegetation, ocean productivity, and gases in the atmosphere and make them readily available to the public. A wholistic approach to climate requires input from multiple satellites to successfully model changes in the concentration GHGs throughout the Earth system. To achieve this goal, the best from the government (e.g., NASA data) needs to merge with private industry to produce consistent long term data records that people can trust.
Kirschbaum agreed that delivering trusted information and providing foundational datasets are core activities for NASA, and used that to segue to the next question, which she addressed to Bolten: NASA (GSFC) sits at the nexus of satellite observations and modeling. Where do you see progress of Earth Science to Action particularly in area of water quality?
Bolten said that the first image of Earth was obtained 78 years ago in 1946. It happened somewhat by chance. Soldiers and scientists at White Sands Missile Range strapped a camera to a captured German V2 rocket, and they were fortunate to get a clear image of Earth. Fast forward to today, NASA has a fleet of more than 20 Earth-observing satellites – see Figure 1 [top] – that provide routine Earth observations. These data are vital for understanding our home planet, and for decision making. The observations from these satellites can be analyzed and used to inform decisions about Earth.
The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) was created the same year as the first Earth image. He noted that ENIAC took up an entire room. Today, his smart phone, which fits in his pocket, is more than 230 million times faster than ENIAC – driving home the point that technology has advanced beyond what most could imagine. Bolten also noted that 2024 is NASA’s Year of Open Science.
Bolten said that his job focuses on food and water insecure areas, which often correlates with areas that lack data infrastructure. There is a vital need to strategically integrate open science and cloud-based services.
“We can’t do this [work] in a bubble,” said Bolten. “We must work together.”
Kirschbaum elevated a question from an attendee: There have been various climate change scenarios that have been offered as possibilities. Which one seems most likely to you to be correct?
Ott explained that the worst- or best-case scenarios are usually outliers (i.e., the conditions in the “real world” typically lie somewhere in between the extremes). She commented that we’ve seen a large climate change investment from the Biden Administration. Those kinds of investments will have impact and have the power to change the trajectory for the future. Part of what NASA does is to show the world that the data we collect does make a tangible difference. That gives society reason for hope. The point of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Center is to bring together all these GHG observations in one place to analyze them and study them to show that we’re making progress on confronting this challenging issue. The objective is to create tangible evidence that, “when we take action, we can change things.”
As if to underscore Ott’s point, Gore responded during her presentation that he believes that public choice does significantly impact how the future unfolds.
“What we decide has consequences,” he said.
Gore is convinced the issue of our changing climate could be addressed if our society made up our collective mind to do it and then committed ourselves to take the decisive action needed to make that decision a reality in the near future.
“The future is really up to us,” said Gore.
The final three questions came from online participants.
How can NASA improve its messaging?
Bolten replied that this is a question that comes up repeatedly in the context of NASA outreach and communications. In the context of today’s discussion, he suggested the need to produce information that is not just useful but also usable (i.e., it can be applied in ways that directly benefit society). As an example, he pointed to the use of machine learning to model a flash flooding event in Ellicott City, MD (described in a 2020 article in Journal of Hydrometeorology) where waters rose from a normal levels to a devastating flash flood in about seven minutes – see Photo 3. Bolten continued that transparency, as well as connecting to people’s motivations, are keys to being more successful with NASA’s messaging.
Photo 3. In May 2018 devastating floodwaters impacted the town of Ellicott City, MD. Water levels in the small basin above the down rose from normal levels to flash flooding in seven minutes. Figure credit: NOAA’s Physical Science Laboratory What big challenges could NASA turn to an opportunity to address climate change?
Román said that advances in forecasting on seasonal to sub-seasonal scales are key areas of focus for studies of Earth’s atmosphere. He noted that it is important to have observations and understand these observations to model events. For sub-seasonal prediction, we need to understand stratospheric dynamics and the chemistry going on in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere.
“Major fires and volcanic eruptions create massive changes in the atmosphere,” said Román. “We can’t see them like we can when we view a Landsat image.”
One tool that could help us with sub-seasonal forecasting is the Stratosphere Troposphere Response using Infrared Vertically-resolved light Explorer (STRIVE) mission, which is one of four mission proposals for the first Earth System Explorer missions chosen for initial Phase A study. This mission aims to examine the interaction between the upper troposphere and the lower stratosphere. In particular, STRIVE will make observations of Earth’s limb (i.e., a narrow slice of atmosphere), which can help scientists gain insight into aerosol loading. According to Román, this data will be key to getting an accurate 30-day forecast. He referred to this information as the “holy grail” in terms of preparedness and resilience by improving early warnings for extreme weather. Some nations are limited to only using Doppler radar and if it fails, they are essentially blind to what is coming.
Kirschbaum cited NASA’s AOS mission, which will be part of ESO, as another example of an important new measuring capability. This mission will represent the “next generation” for precipitations and aerosol observations. Scientists can use the data collected to understand how these phenomena interact with each other and with other atmospheric constituents to form storms.
“AOS will be the baseline while STRIVE would be the bottom line,” concluded Román.
What is the path forward to develop capacity for new observations while still maintaining high-quality, long-term time series and making the data accessible to the public?
Ott cited the Carbon Mapper coalition as a current example where such a balance is being achieved/. Carbon Mapper made its first light images available to the public last week. This mission brings together a unique coalition of partners (including NASA/JPL and Planet, a private company) to develop and deploy two satellites with capabilities to detect and quantify methane (CH4) – e.g., see Figure 3 – and CO2 super-emitters at a level of granularity needed to support direct mitigation action.
Figure 3. On December 4, 2024, the Tanager–1 satellite detected methane (CH4) plumes streaming downwind from oil and gas facilities in the Permian Basin (in west Texas and southeast New Mexico). This is one of more than 300 images of CH4 super-emitters from the oil and gas, coal, waste, and agriculture sectors across 25 countries that were released in February 2025. Tanager–1 launched in August 2024 and is the first satellite developed by the Carbon Mapper coalition between Planet (a private company) and NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and other partners. Planet owns, launched, and operates the satellite, which is equipped with technology from JPL. Figure credit: Carbon Mapper NASA’s investments in technology via its Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) have enabled new airborne instruments that can be deployed in partnership with industry to demonstrate the quality of present-day satellite technologies and to provide a pathway toward next generation technologies. She stressed that the Federal government continues to play a crucial role in establishing standards and ensuring data integrity and continuity. NASA, for example, invests in ground-based systems and data services that help enable the commercial satellite industry. Long-term continuity of measurements is essential to connect new observations to existing ones. In this way, we can enable the continuing rise of NewSpace, while still providing foundational integrity and stability of the long-term climate data records that NASA and other Federal agencies maintain. This framework helps tie all the NewSpace endeavors together.
Gore cited an example of a public–private partnership that happened in the past. He commented that in 1998 (the same year that Triana was proposed) he was also involved in proposal for Digital Earth. The guiding vision behind Digital Earth was to be able to hover over any point and drop down through successively more detailed layers. NASA contracted with a company called Keyhole, which Google acquired in the early 2000s. Gore raised this example to point out that Google Earth is the result of those initial efforts.
Gore also connected this discussion to his work on Climate TRACE, which he had mentioned in his remarks earlier as a current example of public–private partnership. He stated that while we can see CH4 from space, the resolution is relatively low, i.e., a wide area must be scanned to get a CH4 measurement) and higher resolution is required to identify specific (or point) sources of CH4. Climate TRACE offers such higher resolution CH4 measurements, allowing researchers to focus more on identifying specific sources of pollution. By contrast the atmosphere is so enriched with CO2 that the signal-to-noise ratio is too high to measure the gas from space. For CO2 analysis, Climate TRACE uses AI to fuse together various images to allow CO2 to be detectable. The resulting measurements are precise enough to detect ripple ponds created by rotating fan blades.
Closing Remarks
Dalia Kirschbaum closed the meeting by thanking the guest of honor, Al Gore, once again for coming to the GSFC event. Gore not only spoke but was an active participant who demonstrated his knowledge of this subject area gained from years of experience working on climate issues. She quipped that “he’s the only former Vice President ever to use the Term signal-to-noise ratio correctly when talking to scientists.”.
Kirschbaum also thanked everyone who participated in this event – including the over 800 online participants. While the discussions today offered numerous glimpses into the future of Earth remote-sensing observations, this information barely scratches the surface of all the work being carried out by scientists and engineers at NASA to make these plans a reality. She thanked all of those who work at NASA – who often put in long hours, quietly, behind the scenes without much recognition – for the work they do daily to enable NASA’s mission.
Alan B. Ward
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Global Science & Technology Inc.
alan.b.ward@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Mar 11, 2025 Related Terms
Earth Science View the full article
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By NASA
Artist’s rendering of a potentially habitable super-Earth orbiting a star called HD 20794. Illustration credit: Gabriel Pérez Díaz, SMM (IAC) The Discovery
A possible “super-Earth” orbits a relatively close, Sun-like star, and could be a habitable world – but one of extreme temperature swings, from scorching heat to deep freeze.
Key Facts
The newly confirmed planet is the outermost of three detected so far around a star called HD 20794, just 20 light-years from Earth. Its 647-day orbit is comparable to Mars in our solar system. But this planet’s orbit is highly eccentric, stretched into an oval shape. That brings the planet close enough to the star to experience runaway heating for part of its year, then carries it far enough away to freeze any potential water on its surface. The planet has been bouncing between these extremes roughly every 300 days – perhaps for billions of years.
Details
The planet spends a good chunk of its year in the “habitable zone” around its star, the orbital distance that would allow liquid water to form on the surface under the right atmospheric conditions. But because of its eccentric orbit, it moves to a distance interior to the inner edge of the habitable zone when closest to the star, and outside the outer edge when farthest away. At its closest, the planet’s distance from the star is comparable to Venus’s distance from the Sun; at its farthest point, it is nearly twice the distance from Earth to the Sun. The planet is possibly rocky, like Earth, but could be a heftier version – about six times as massive as our home planet.
Star HD 20794 and its posse of possible planets have been extensively studied, but the international team of astronomers that confirmed the outer planet, led by Nicola Nari of Light Bridges S.L. and the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, examined more than 20 years worth of data to pin down all three planets’ orbits and likely masses.
The scientists relied on data from two ground-based, precision instruments: HARPS, the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher in La Silla, Chile, and ESPRESSO, the Echelle Spectrograph for Rocky Exoplanets and Stable Spectroscopic Observations in Paranal, Chile. Both instruments, connected to powerful telescopes, measure tiny shifts in the light spectrum of stars, caused by the gravity of planets tugging the star back and forth as they orbit.
But such tiny shifts in the star’s spectrum also can be caused by imposters – spots, flares, or other activity on the star’s surface, carried along as the star rotates and masquerading as orbiting planets. The science team spent years painstakingly analyzing the spectrum shifts, or “radial velocity” data, for any sign of background noise or even jitters from the instruments themselves. They confirmed the reputation of HD 20794 as a fairly quiet star, not prone to outbursts that might be confused for signs of orbiting planets.
Fun Facts
The elliptically orbiting super-Earth appears to be an ideal target for future space-based telescopes designed to search for habitable worlds, seeking possible signs of life. High on the list is NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory, which will someday examine the atmospheres of Earth-sized planets around Sun-like stars. When launched in the decades ahead, the observatory would spread the light from such planets into a spectrum to determine which gases are present – including those that might reveal some form of life. The relative closeness of HD 20974, only 20 light-years away, its brightness, and its low level of surface activity – not to mention the third planet’s wild temperature swings – could make this system a prime candidate for scrutiny by HWO.
The Discoverers
The international science team that confirmed the eccentric super-Earth was led by researcher Nicola Nari of the Light Bridges S.L. and the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, and included Dr. Michael Cretignier of the University of Oxford, who first picked up the potential planet’s signal in 2022. Their paper, “Revisiting the multi-planet system of the nearby star HD 20794,” was published online by the journal, Astronomy and Astrophysics, in January 2025.
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