NASA's Curious Universe - Welcome to Earth

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

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 help 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.

Here at NASA, we've landed on the moon. That's one small step for man. We've driven robots across Martian craters. Touchout confirmed. Perseveris. Safefully on the surface of Mars, ready to begin seeking the sand of past life. And we've peered into the depths of time and space. Declage liftoff from a tropical rainforest to the edge of time itself.

James Webb begins a voyage back to the birth of the universe. But you don't have to look far to find an amazing, mysterious place. That's why we also study Earth. Well, there's a lot that we don't understand about our home planet. We understand, I would argue, more about the surface of the moon than we understand about how our oceans work. I'm Jacob Pinter. Over billions of years, this average rocky planet developed a breathable atmosphere and oceans. And unlike any other planet we know of, life's true.

sprung up here. I'm Patty Boyd. From the vantage point of space, our Earth is a fragile blue marble, a place worth understanding and protecting. When an astronaut gets to space outside of our atmosphere, and they look around. First of all, the view never gets old. It looks cold and deep and dark. And the Earth...

This is our one little planet that all of us are living on. Looks like this beautiful gem. 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. 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. 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 to, for humans to live on Mars.

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. So this spring on Curious Universe, we're exploring Earth the way only NASA can. In this series, we're telling the story of NASA Earth science. We'll dive in to our colorful oceans. We very often forget that the oceans are in. They tend to be a bit in the background, but their role is so critical to us being alive on this planet, right?

A single yardstick isn't quite enough. You really have to measure it everywhere. in the world if you want to see how the whole ocean and the whole climate is changing. And that's what we do with satellites. You'll hear why NASA doesn't just collect data. We share it with people who need it, like American farmers. 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 for those types of big issues without NASA. 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. Celebrate our home planet with a special mini-series of NASA's curious universe. Coming soon, right here in your podcast feed. Welcome to Earth.