Video Descriptive Text for Leaders in Lidar | Chapter 5: Masterpieces of Science

Narration:

Transcript:

0:00 Old footage of a group including Jim Garvin, Dave Smith, Maria Zuber and Xiaoli Sun. They stand over a man in the foreground looking at a computer. The camera pans across the group and ends on Jim Abshire.

0:05 Jim Abshire sits in front of shelves of books on a video call.

0:06 Old footage of the Airborne Topographic Mapper, a red device that sits on two metal beams like tracks. It has green lights on top and a white board sits beneath it

0:07 Old aerial footage from a plane overlooking the shoreline below

0:08 Animation of the GEDI instrument on the International Space Station orbing over Earth, pointing eight lasers to the ground

0:11 A multicolored lidar image of trees in a forest. The trees are all shades of green, at the base of them are varying shades of yellow and red

0:12 A lidar image of side of a building with two rows of windows. There’s almost a blue-ish/purple-ish tint over the entire image

0:13 A computer-rendered airplane on a blue backdrop. Dark blue and black speckles swirl around it

0:14 Jim Garvin in front of a colorful topographic map of Mars

0:16 Fullscreen graphic of series and episode title reading “Leaders in Lidar, Chapter 5: Masterpieces of Science” in a yellow blocky glowing font. The background is a blue grid with multicolored laser beams flying toward the camera and various images of people and instruments

0:23 Jim Garvin again, but this time a graphic in the bottom left introduces him with “Jim Garvin, MOLA Co-Investigator, NASA Goddard Chief Scientist”

0:24 A lidar image of a building and part of another, smaller building are placed inside a neon green half-circle with rings like a tree trunk. There is nothing outside the half-circle but dark indigo.

0:26 An aircraft computer monitor with various graphs, data points, and numbers, shows the word “HALO” at the top of the screen.

0:27 A visualization of a curtain of dark blue-ish purple with red lines like a graph sits perpendicular to the U.S. which it lays on top of. The banner is labeled “Dust.” The Southern region of the U.S. has pink and yellow speckles throughout. A key in the bottom right shows that pink represents a lesser dust probability and yellow represents a greater dust probability.

0:28 An animation of the International Space Station with the label “CATS” makes a white arced line over Earth as it orbits and leaves a curtain of lidar data behind.

0:30 A photo of six men, including Xiaoli Sun and Jim Abshire, pose for a picture in front of various wires and computers.

0:34 A man leans in close to observe a long clear tube in a dark room filled with wires, computers and equipment

0:35 A man holds a remote while standing in front of an optical scope facing out a window. He leans down to look through the scope.

0:37 A plane flies across the screen. The NASA logo can be seen on the tail wing.

0:39 Two men with headsets on board the aircraft look at a computer screen that is out of focus

0:40 A different angle of the two men, this time a large black downward-pointing instrument takes up half of the screen

0:42 Jim Abshire again, this time a graphic in the bottom left introduces him with “Jim Abshire, CO2 Sounder Principal Investigator”

0:44 A graph where the y-axis represents altitude in meters, the x-axis represents time. The title of the graph is “Atmospheric Backscatter Profiles by CO2 Sounder.” The graph forms squared off waves that increase in width and height as time progresses

0:52 Abshire in his office on a video call.

0:55 An old photo of the MOLA telescope, a thick white ring with a mirror inside attached to a smaller black ring like a satellite dish

0:56 An old photo of Jack Bufton and another engineer in cleanroom suits standing in front of large cylindrical instruments. A hatch on one of the vats near the second scientist is open

0:57 Old footage of engineers working on GLAS instrument on ICESat in a cleanroom.

0:58 Two engineers in cleanroom suits have their backs to the camera looking at a large elevated cube with a large tubular opening at its center. This is the ATLAS instrument in a testing phase

0:59 An engineer in a cleanroom suit attaches two small black parts together on a table with many other small parts

1:00 Bryan Blair attaches a thick cable to an opening on a large black piece in front of him

1:01 Blair looks at a monitor with computer rendered ice features on it

1:02 The medium-sized tubular instrument LVIS with a lense sits on a table in a lab. A blue rectangular piece sits on top of it that reads “Northrop Grumman”

1:03 Bryan Blair in his office. A graphic in the bottom left introduces him with “Bryan Blair, Instrument Scientist”

1:09 Images of lidar data in 3D. The images are buildings in neon green and purple shades. The neon green makes a circular shape on the larger building and part of the smaller building. There are rings in the green circle like a tree trunk. A graphic at the bottom reads “Hazard Detection Lidar Test Images (16 million range measurements in two seconds)”

1:12 The side of a building with two rows of windows. There’s almost a blue-ish/purple-ish tint over the entire image. The graphic is still seen at the bottom

1:15 An animation of a rover as it lands on the grey surface of the moon

1:17 Blair in his office

1:20 Animation of a rectangle made up of dotted lines moves across the entire screen. Everything inside the rectangle is lit up and everything outside the rectangle is dark. The image the rectangle slides over is made up of red, green and blue splotches intermixed like a painting. The rectangle clicks like a camera taking a photo and stops moving. A smaller square appears inside the rectangle after it stops, and also scans over the image, except inside the area of the rectangle. It stops too, and text above it reads “Landing Area Detected”

1:26 Jim Garvin talking in a studio interview

1:29 A visualization of Earth rotating with a curtain of data overlaid. Lines appear along the longitude that are peppered with orange streaks, they continue to appear as the globe spins.

1:31 Animation of the surface of Europa with plumes of vapor coming out of cracks in the beige and orange surface.

1:32 Visualization of Mars rotating toward camera with a visible icy North Pole.

1:34 A visualization of the U.S. Chesapeake region. Grids of trees appear in quick succession as the camera slowly rotates.

1:35 The Moon with a topographic map covering the entire sphere spins. The center of the moon is mostly shades of blue, with reds, yellows and greens painting the outer edges.

1:37 The same image, but half the Moon goes dark, leaving a crescent shape on the left

1:39 Jim Garvin talks

1:43 A man in front of white bookshelves in a home office, a graphic reads “David E. Smith, MOLA Principal Investigator”

1:50 Old footage of Smith with Maria Zuber and others excitedly reacting in an office

1:59 A man sits in front of a picture of a satellite over Earth. A graphic in the bottom left reads “John Cavanaugh, Instrument Systems Engineer”

2:07 A man sits in front of curtains and files in a home office. The graphic reads “Xiaoli Sun, Lidar Instrument Scientist”

2:09 An old black and white photo of Xiaoli Sun

2:14 Old footage of Sun, Cavanaugh, Bufton and Blair and others in an office gathered to wait for MOLA data

2:17 Photo of Sun examines part of a green laser in a dark room

2:20 Old footage of a rocket launching

2:26 A man in an office on a video call. A graphic reads “Ralph Dubayah, GEDI Principal Investigator, University of Maryland”

2:28 A large group of women, men, and children in front of an ocean. They pose for a photo in black GEDI shirts

2:34 Ralph Dubayah in his office

2:41 Dubayah and another man pose in front of a rocket tower

2:46 Tom Neumann and two other men stand in a parking lot in front of a rocket tower

2:48 A rocket launches in the dark

2:50 Tom Neumann claps while looking up at the rocket before hugging his daughter

2:56 A man on a couch with a screen and a NASA logo behind him. A graphic in the bottom introduces him as “Tom Neumann, ICESat-2 Project Scientist”

3:00 An old photo of a group in orange safety vests who stand in front of an airplane that reads “NSF-National Science Foundation.” Bryan Blair, Scott Luthcke, Dave Rabine and Michelle Horton are visible.

3:09 A man sits in his house in front of a fireplace and a table on a video call. The graphic in the bottom left reads “Scott Luthcke, ICESat-2 Geolocation Lead”

3:19 Old photo of Luthcke in a plane cabin with others, all smiling

3:25 A woman sits in front of a wood-paneled wall. The graphic in the bottom left rads “Jan McGarry, ICESat-2 Receiver Algorithm Engineer”

3:29 An old photo of McGarry, Abshire, and one other person in a plane cabin. McGarry wears a headset

3:33 An old group photo, McGarry is spotlighted

3:37 Back to McGarry in front of the wood wall

3:39 A younger man on a couch, the graphic in the bottom right reads “JP Swinski, ICESat-2 Software Engineer”

3:45 A large team photo. A man in front holds up a poster that says “GLAS” with image of GLAS

3:49 A man sits in front of a red wall. The graphic in the bottom left reads “Jay Zwally, ICESat Project Scientist”

3:51 Zwally and a woman in an empty, icy terrain stand with two panels and a large yellow case

3:54 An old photo of Blair and Garvin inside of a plane cabin. A sign is lit up that says “Signal Kit 2”

3:56 An old photo of six men standing in front of a plane with Garvin and Bufton visible. The graphic in the bottom left reads “Voice of Jack Bufton, MOLA Lead Engineer”

3:57 An old photo of Cavanaugh and Bufton sit at a table with food and drinks

3:59 Old footage of Bufton sitting at a computer terminal talking to Blair during the Shuttle Laser Altimeter experiment in the mid 1990s

4:01 Old footage of Dave Smith pointing at a computer screen with a pen. The screen shows a topographic map of Mars

4:02 Old footage of Garvin, Cavanaugh, Blair, Bufton and others in an office awaiting results from MOLA.

4:04 Cavanaugh high fiving engineers in a lab

4:07 Old footage of Zuber, Bufton and others reacting to MOLA data on a computer screen

4:10 Old footage of the same group of people clapping and cheering

4:13 Blair adjusts wires in a lab

4:14 McGarry in a meeting laughing

4:16 Old footage of Bufton recording data he reads from a computer monitor

4:17 Dubayah and Blair stand in front of a large screen showing GEDI over Earth at a press briefing. They both hold mics. A crowd is seen in the foreground

4:19 Old footage of Zwally talking to the camera during an ICESat press briefing

4:21 Tom Neumann and two other men stand in a parking lot in front of a rocket tower

4:22 Old footage of Jim Garvin talking to an interviewer

4:25 Old footage of Center Director Noel Hinners at a podium speaking

4:27 Yellow text appears on screen. In the top left it reads “The Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter operated from 1997 until 2001, generating topographic maps of Mars still used today.” In the bottom right, the text reads “Produced by Ryan Fitzgibbons”

4:31 More text. The bottom left reads “The Geoscience Laser Altimeter System on ICESat operated from 2003 to 2009, revolutionizing the understanding of ice sheet and sea ice dynamics.” The top right reads “Narrated by Lauren Ward”

4:37 More text. The top left reads “The Mercury Laser Altimeter operated from 2011 until 2015 when the MESSENGER spacecraft slammed into the surface of Mercury.” The bottom right reads “Project Support, Tom Neumann and Jim Garvin”

4:41 More text. Additional credits appear on the right of the screen, on the left, text reads “LOLA, GEDI, and ATLAS on ICESat-2 continue to operate today, mapping the Moon, forests, and Earth’s polar regions”

4:48 The NASA logo, a blue circle with a red stylized arrow and a white orbit path around white letters reading “NASA”