As NASA prepares to send
humans to the Moon and Mars ...
and peer even deeper into the universe,
we turn with a renewed focus
to our home planet of Earth.
The next generation of Earth science
begins with the new Earth System Observatory.
The core of the observatory
is an array of five new satellite missions
that will study the atmosphere, the ground
and even what's happening underneath the surface.
These spacecraft will look at the Earth.
Each one of them their own way and will
integrate all the data and a common approach.
Taken together as a single observatory,
we will have a complete 3-dimensional
understanding our earth’s systems –
how they work together …
how one change can influence another.
It will watch our planet change
driving solutions for better living,
managing water and food resources,
predicting natural hazards,
coping with sea level rise in coastal communities
and heat islands in our cities.
Every 10 years, the best scientists in the United States
and worldwide come together and create a strategy
that the decadal strategy
and it recommended that we build missions
that together form an Earth System Observatory.
We're going to be looking at process
at the microphysical scale,
at the large kind of convective scale,
at the smaller scale in the oceans,
and we're going to be investigating those,
pulling that out, encapsulating that
putting that into weather
models and climate models
and those are going
to allow us to predict and project
the future with far more confidence.
We can from space help farmers.
We can help others
that grow food around the earth.
If there is an earthquake,
we can get our models better
and from there we can predict
better also in the future.
We can monitor freshwater
both on the surface and underground
to help water managers
both for communities as well as agriculture.
To build the observatory,
we will expand our partnerships
with commercial companies
and international space agencies
to take advantage of innovation
and new technology.
We recognize because of the global
nature of the issues at hand,
we want international partners
to be part of that also.
We are working together
and the science that we're doing
has to serve all of us.
NISAR is our first major partnership
with the Indian Space Agency in Earth science.
It brings together two different kinds of radar systems
that together will see
changes in our Earth's surface
that will help us predict
natural hazards in. the future.
The NISAR mission will
measure changes in Earth's surface
less than a centimeter across.
It will measure the movement
of glaciers and ice sheets ...
the dynamics of earthquakes
and volcanoes ...
and changes in farmland.
We will observe the earth
every 12 days exactly
at the righ repeat pass orbit.
We can study small changes
in the Earth system sciences.
The Earth's climate is changing.
We have documented the changes
that we're seeing over the last few decades.
We know that it's being driven
by human activities
and it's absolutely essential
that we continue to understand
what's happening, what's changing
in order to better predict
what's going to happen, and perhaps
help people make better choices.
Understanding how our planet and its climate are changing
is the foundation. for a more resilient
and sustainable future.
NASA's Earth System Observatory
is the next step in this ongoing mission.
A mission to the only planet
we can call "home".