NASA<\/b>\u2019s new Administrator Bill Nelson spoke at the Space Symposium on Tuesday, emphasizing the agency\u2019s focus on using space to impact Earth, particularly to fight climate change. <\/p>\n
\u201cNASA\u2019s value is not limited to space,\u201d Nelson said. \u201cThink about NASA\u2019s work to stop wildfires and address our changing climate. Over the past week, a thick plume of smoke from wildfires raging from the Pacific Northwest swept across the sky here in Colorado. As NASA, we will always look upward and push outward into the unknown. Central to our mission is protecting this planet. Right now, it\u2019s the only one we inhabit.\u201d <\/p>\n
Speaking in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Nelson announced that the satellite imagery software program OpenET will be publicly available starting in September. This program will offer NASA satellite data to farmers, water managers, and conservation groups to inform irrigation management, and help water and land managers develop water budgets. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt has the power to assist with water management in the West, telling users how much water is being consumed by agricultural crops,\u201d Nelson said. <\/p>\n
This software was announced in 2020 as a collaboration between the Environmental Defense Fund<\/b>, NASA, the Desert Research Institute<\/b>, and Google<\/b>. The \u201cET\u201d stands for evapotranspiration, the process by which water evaporates from the land surface and transpires from plants. It is an important water measurement for agriculture that can be tracked by satellites. The software will make methods of estimating evapotranspiration more accessible. <\/p>\n
Nelson also spoke to NASA\u2019s vision with the Artemis program to return to the Moon and subsequently, land astronauts on Mars \u2014 and to the challenges NASA has faced. <\/p>\n
A recent report from NASA\u2019s Office of Inspector General said that NASA\u2019s astronaut space suits won\u2019t be ready until April 2025 at the earliest, making the agency\u2019s plans to reach the Moon by 2024 \u201cnot feasible.\u201d In addition, Blue Origin<\/b> has filed a protest over NASA\u2019s Human Landing System award to SpaceX with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. <\/p>\n
\u201cSpace is hard. Multiple components are involved in its complex mission, like Gateway, a commercial Human Landing System, and a next-generation spacesuit. Our Human Landing System demo award has been held up by delays, and by litigation. The spacesuits, which for the first time will be built by our commercial partners, have been technically challenging. And COVID-19 has caused unprecedented disruptions in the supply chain,\u201d Nelson said. \u201cBut remember back to what [President] Kennedy said at Rice University in 1962: \u2018We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.\u2019 We can do hard things.\u201d <\/p>\n
Nelson has a long history of working on space priorities during his years in Congress, and is known for being the second member of Congress to travel to space. He was a payload specialist on a Columbia Space Shuttle mission in January 1986. <\/p>\n
The administrator considers himself part of the Apollo generation, and he spoke to the promise of the new Artemis generation. <\/p>\n
\u201cNASA\u2019s 21st century lunar exploration program will make new discoveries, advance technologies, and show us how to live and to work in another world. For that to be possible, the space program needs a constancy. That\u2019s why NASA must be a nonpartisan agency, and why the Artemis program has bipartisan support,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cFor the first time in more than 50 years,\u201d Nelson continued, \u201cNASA will return humans to the Moon. We will go in a way that reflects the world today, with government, with industry, and with international partners in a global effort.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NASA\u2019s new Administrator Bill Nelson spoke at the Space Symposium on Tuesday, emphasizing the agency\u2019s focus on using space to impact Earth, particularly to fight climate change. \u201cNASA\u2019s value is not limited to space,\u201d Nelson said. \u201cThink about NASA\u2019s work to stop wildfires and address our changing climate. Over the past week, a thick plume […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":56792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56791"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}