ウィスパリング同時通訳研究会コミュの#StateOfNASA State of NASA Address from Administrator Bill Nelson

Shane Kimbrough: (00:00)… 50 miles above the earth, conducting world-class research for the earth.

Megan McArthur: (00:04)As astronauts. We have the best jobs in the galaxy, but the work we do on station, wouldn’t be possible without your support. We’re on a path to land the first woman and the first person of color on the moon as part of the Artemis Program.

Mark Vande Hei: (00:18)It is our honor to introduce someone who knows exactly what it’s like to live and work up here in orbit our, new administrator, the honorable Senator Bill Nelson.

Bill Nelson: (00:29)
Hi everybody, thank you very much. And thank you, Megan, Shane and Mark for the introduction. It’s well-known that NASA is the most popular agency or department of the federal government. And that’s because of you, the NASA family, and it’s such an honor to serve in a leadership position in this extraordinary group of folks. I’m so proud today to be joined by my wife, Grace, and be joined virtually by our children, Bill Jr. and Nan Ellen. I’m so grateful for all of their support, which has been over a lifetime of public service.(01:22)
I got a call from the president-elect right after the first of the year and he wanted me to serve here. It was a surprise because I had not sought this position, but when the president calls you, you know what you do, you click your heels and you salute and you say, “Yes, sir.” And I am very glad that he gave me this opportunity. It’s been an incredible month getting up to speed about the agency’s goals and missions. And I want you to know, the truth be known, I’m like a kid in a candy shop.
(02:10)
Space has always been a passion for me. I grew up in the shadow of the cape. The names of the Original Seven were all known by our schoolmates. And it’s been a passion that has been fueled by my family history. As a matter of fact, on what was scrubland of rattlesnakes and mosquitoes and alligators, in 1913 my grandparents homesteaded under the Homestead Act and that 160 acres of land was deeded to my grandmother in 1917. That 160 acres today is at the north end of the space shuttle runway.
(03:09)
When I went to the launch pad for the first time, I was the seventh to crawl in and strap in. I wandered off on that launch tower by myself, looking to the Northwest in the direction of the old homestead. And it was just hard for me to comprehend that three quarters of a century earlier, my grandparents had homesteaded there and they could have never believed that a grandson was literally going to leave the face of the earth.
(03:47)
So, on the space shuttle in between conducting 12 medical experiments, enjoying the best crew ever, whenever you would get a free moment, and that was rare… So often I had to cheat on my sleep and I’d float up to the flight deck and I’d just float there in front of the window, looking back at earth. It really has an impression on you. And there’s actually a term for it among space fliers, it’s called the Overview Effect. Because, in the window of your spacecraft you see our home, the planet and it looks so beautiful, such a creation in the middle of nothing. And yet, it also looks fragile.
(04:52)
As a politician, I was struck by the fact that as we orbited the earth every 90 minutes, I did not see political divisions. I did not see racial divisions. I did not see religious divisions. I saw that we were all in this together. This is the unique mission of NASA, because we all come together as we push the frontier, as we push out into the unknown and we see our planet, our home, and we have a central mission to protect our planet.
(05:46)
As a result of that experience, I became more of an environmentalist, because I could see our ecosystem. Bob Cabana is here. Anyone who has flown, or you see these dramatic photos and videos, and you look at the rim of the earth and you can actually see the thin film of the atmosphere. You realize that that is what sustains all of life. With the naked eye you could see, from that altitude, how we’re messing it up.
(06:24)
You could see the color contrast coming across Brazil in the upper Amazon region. You could look to the east, there’s the mouth of the Amazon, you could see the silt for hundreds of miles out into the Atlantic. Coming across Madagascar, back then 36 years ago, they’d cut down all the trees. And so when the rains came there wasn’t a top soil and all of that top soil washed down the rivers. And you could clearly see that from space in the mouths of all the rivers that silt flowing into the bright blue waters of the Indian ocean.
(07:08)
Because of that environmental effect, I was really excited last week to join the President in announcing a new development of a next generation of climate data systems at NASA. It’s the Earth System Observatory to help us understand and track how climate change is impacting communities across the country and around the world.
(07:42)
That meeting, held at FEMA headquarters, in preparation for hurricane season. I underscored to the President how this Earth System Observatory will better help America and the world with better data to track natural hazards, including hurricanes, and be better prepared, and to support our communities, families, and businesses before a disaster, not just after.
(08:17)
The Earth System Observatory will consist of five integrated satellites. The first of which is scheduled to be launched in January of ’23. We need these investments because storms are getting stronger and more destructive and if we want to mitigate climate change, we’ve got to measure it. And that’s what NASA does. NASA designs, builds, launches, all of those instruments in space to give us an unprecedented understanding of the earth. It’s a 3D holistic view from the bedrock to the atmosphere. So let’s learn more about this new video.

Speaker 1: (09:11)
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.

Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen: (09:42)
These spacecraft will look at the earth, each one of them, their own way, and we’ll integrate all the data in a common approach.

Speaker 1: (09:51)
Taken together as a single observatory, we will have a complete three dimensional understanding of our earth 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.

Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen: (10:24)
Every 10 years, the best scientists in the United States and worldwide come together and create a strategy, the Decadal Strategy, and it recommended that we build missions that together form an Earth System Observatory.

Gavin Schmidt: (10:38)
We’re going to be looking at processes at the micro physical scale at the large kind of convective scale, at the smallest 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 competence.

Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen: (11:02)We can, from space-
Speaker 2: (11:03)… with far more companies.
Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen: (11:03)We can, from space, help farmers. We can help others that grow food around the earth.
Dr. Mitra Dutta: (11:09)If there is an earthquake we can get to our models better, and from there, we can predict better also in the future.
DR. Karen St. Germain: (11:17)We can monitor freshwater both on the surface and underground to help water managers, both for communities, as well as agriculture.
Speaker 1: (11:27)To build the observatory, we will expand our partnerships with commercial companies and international space agencies to take advantage of innovation and new technology.
Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen: (11:39)We recognized 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.
DR. Karen St. Germain: (11:53)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 surface that will help us predict natural hazards in the future.
Speaker 1: (12:11)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.
Dr. Mitra Dutta: (12:25)We will observe the earth every 12 days exactly at the right repeat past orbit. We can study small changes in the earth system sciences.
Gavin Schmidt: (12:40)The Earth’s climate is changing. We have documented the changes that we seen 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.
Speaker 1: (13:03)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 you can call home.

Bill Nelson: (13:21)
And you’ve just seen some of these great scientists. And I believe Dr. Z is almost as excited as I am, and that’s what he’s leading. And it’s incredible. And what you just saw is just the tip of the iceberg. The Earth System Observatory is just one of the many missions that we have on the horizon. And I’m excited to share more about the exciting future we have in store here at NASA. But first I want to thank you for all the work you’ve done over the past year. Back in March, 2020, many of you packed up your computers. You went home to work from your kitchen table, your living rooms, your basements. While some of you were mission critical. And you had to continue working on site under strict guidelines to keep you healthy and to keep your colleagues and your families healthy too, you did that. And I thank you for that.
(14:31)
And despite all these hardships, it’s been an amazing year for NASA. The agency has launched 10 astronauts from American rockets on American soil. We’ve had all of America on the edge of their seats as Perseverance came through those seven minutes of terror, made a successful landing on Mars. And since then we’ve created oxygen on Mars and we’ve seen Ingenuity, that little helicopter, defeat the odds, outliving its planned lifespan. And it transitioned from a tech demo to a scout. It’s the first flight on another planet. And here’s Jennifer Trosper out at JPL to give us a live update on Perseverance and Ingenuity.

Jennifer Trosper: (15:40)
Thank you. Well, it’s a privilege to be here to talk about the Perseverance Rover mission. Today is the hundred and first sol on Mars for the Perseverance Rover. 101 Martian days ago, Percy successfully landed on the red planet at Jezero Crater. Jezero Crater is an ancient lake bed on Mars and a great place for Perseverance to search for ancient microbial life. Now shortly after landing, we started sending down images for the first time of the landing and from the rover’s perspective. And then shortly after that, Perseverance quickly got to work on her commissioning activities. Commissioning is when we check out all the functions of the Rover to make sure that during their flight to Mars and their rather dramatic landing on Mars, the functions all still work. Just two days ago, Perseverance finished all of her commissioning activities. During this time, she sent down over 75,000 images of her landing site. And some of those images were what I call the vacation photos of Percy and Ingenuity sitting there together on the surface of Mars, learning new things.
(16:59)
She also deployed Ingenuity, photographed the flights and relayed the data back to earth. And now we are continuing with an operational demo where Ingenuity is helping Perseverance learn new things and figure out which directions to go for her science campaigns. We’ve recorded the sounds on Mars for the first time, of the wheels interacting with the rocks, of the winds, of the helicopter flying, but we’ve also checked out every instrument and the robotic arm and the sampling system and the vehicle is working phenomenally well. And now, since the end of commissioning has happened, we are starting to drive south to region called SETA. SETA is an area where we will look around and find a location that is the best place for our first sample. So it’s been a very exciting 100 days, but we’re looking forward to the beginning of this new science campaign. It’s back to you.

Bill Nelson: (18:01)
Well, thank you so much. And I really believe that no other organization in the world can do what this amazing team has done. And certainly not under such difficult circumstances. In the nearly 15 months since the beginning of the pandemic, you all have not only landed a rover on Mars, but also supported advancements, getting us closer to launching the first crude Artemis mission. And in just a few months, the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, which we’ll see the light from the first galaxies that formed in the early universe after the big bang. Think about that. Universe almost 13 and a half billion years ago. James Webb will capture the light from about 150 million years after the big bang. So James Webb will be looking back 13,350,000,000 years to capture the light. And so this is just a few other things that you all have been working on. And I’m thrilled now to have a special treat for you because it’s a special guest, Captain Kirk himself, to inspire you all to boldly go into the future.

William Shatner: (19:51)
I want to congratulate Bill Nelson as NASA’s new administrator. We’re all delighted that he’s here. Why does NASA exist? Why do we exist? Why does life exist upon this strange and lonely planet? How did we arrive and for what reason? An age old question wasn’t that each of us at one time or another has asked. Each time the universe responds with silence. NASA stands before that silence and probes that mystery. We stand with NASA in response to the incredible miracle of impossible life on an insensate world. We move back to a moon that we wish we had never deserted. We move onward to Mars to establish a base and then a community, and finally a miniature civilization on its enigmatic soil. (20:57)
We do it because NASA has realized that the universe which extends for billions of light years in all directions is meaningless unless… Unless what? Unless there are observers and caretakers of that stunning interstellar display. The universe demands to be noticed, to be seen and to dutifully noted. The purpose of life on earth is to see, to know and to tell what the cosmos has to offer. Without us, human beings, without NASA, the universe would be unseen, unknown, untouched. So NASA, in the coming years, will be chief witness and we as fellow observers celebrates to the cause. Can NASA do this? Can we run tandem with NASA and live- (22:03)
Can we run tandem with NASA and live forever or a million years, whichever comes first? We can. We will. We must.
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