Hello, I'm Alex Honnold, professional rock climber, and today
I get the pleasure of chatting with Ivona, an oceanographer and a scientist
who can help me understand NASA's PACE mission and what it does for
the health of the oceans and what that means for us.
Ivona, thanks for a chatting with me today.
So, so happy to be here.
I'm very honored myself too.
You may not know, but actually the last two big expeditions
that I've done were for television programs, and they both involved
ocean health and and one of them, we've launched a NASA probe for OMG,
the Oceans Melting Greenland project. -Oh, awesome.
So I feel like I’m
I've been sort of into NASA ocean health projects already, but so it's it's
nice to be able to talk to you today and learn more about the current project.
So, yeah, well, I mean, like, you were working part part of the
you know, this part of NASA that is looking at ice, but NASA is really,
you know, looking at all different systems of the Earth.
And we have ice, we have land, we have atmosphere, we have ocean.
And I'm kind of like, you know, really focused on oceanography
and trying to understand how different processes in the ocean are impacting,
you know, our livelihood, but also the whole, you know,
climate system of the Earth.
But I think maybe the bigger question is
how often does NASA look back at Earth as opposed to at space?
I mean, I think that most of us think of NASA as,
you know, going to the Moon, going to Mars, going into deep space or something.
But how much of NASA's work is focused on the Earth?
So that's a really good point, because when, you know, people
ask me what I do, I say like, I'm an oceanographer and I work at NASA.
They're like, hmm?
You know,
big question mark on top of their head because not that many people know
that really like a big portion of NASA's mission is looking back at the Earth,
you know, having that vantage point of space and turning these instruments
back towards our home allows us to observe the Earth
in a way that we can't do it from sitting down here.
So big portion of NASA, I think we have like 20 different satellites
are looking back at the Earth, at different aspects of Earth.
So talk about this current mission, the PACE mission.
What differentiates that from the other NASA
missions that are also looking at the Earth?
So PACE mission,
you know, It's my baby, So I love it and I think is the best one ever.
But PACE is I mean, like, you know, like your love your children the best.
They are better than everybody else, however weird they are.
But PACE stands for Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem
And it's a really one of a kind mission that’s
going to be looking at a global ocean color and atmosphere.
as well.
What makes it so special is that for difference that other global
missions, it's going to be able to see so many different colors of the rainbow.
So imagine, you know, like you have a supersonic camera
sitting on a satellite looking down at the ocean.
And before this one, we just had that like, you know, Nokia flip phone cameras.
So the amount of information that we're going to be getting is so much larger
than we had before and higher quality information--sorry.
Go ahead.
What is that, what does that information tell you?
So why does the color of the ocean tell us anything about the health of the ocean?
Yeah, great question.
So so, you know, like, yeah, everybody thinks ocean’s blue.
Ocean is not blue.
Ocean comes in many different colors and what changes the color of the ocean--
I'm like, I don't know where you from originally.
California.
Okay, well, you have kind of bluish color of the ocean, but, you know, like,
if you go in and like in the San Francisco Bay and stuff,
that ocean is not really any more blue.
It's kind of like greenish and brownish and stuff.
And the color of the ocean changes based on the things that are in the ocean.
And we go in the field, we measure the color of the ocean,
we measure the things that are in the ocean.
We try to build these mathematical ways to translate the color
into what is in the ocean.
And, you know, we can have sediment, we can have dirt,
we can have dissolved organic material, which is kind of like, you know, leaf tea.
But ultimately, and most importantly,
We can have this teeny tiny plankton that lives in there.
These are like, you know, plants or animals
that support the life in the ocean.
So that's kind of what I study.
So just by looking at the color,
I can tell you how many of them there is in there.
So yeah.
That tells us a lot, a lot about, you know, how ocean is, how healthy is the ocean.
And it's kind of
amazing when you think about it that a satellite in space
with a very fancy camera can look at the ocean and tell how many living things
are inside the ocean.
I mean normally you would think that
to determine the number of plankton or phytoplankton in the ocean,
you have to sample the water itself and sort of count the living things.
I mean, isn't it--like is this new technology?
Or is this you like I mean, this seems this seems kind of mind-blowing to me
that you can count the number of living things in the ocean from space. -It is.
It is because you have something that is so
teeny tiny that you can't see with your eyes.
And we usually yes,
we usually take samples of water, look at them under the microscope.
But if you think: they're plants, no, and every plant kind of has green stuff,
the same as plants in the land, these guys have this pigment
that allows them to actually make that and capture
the energy and capture the carbon and feed the rest of the ocean --using chlorophyll?
chlorophyll?--so we can see this.
Yeah. Chlorophyl. Exactly. Yay. Awesome.
So we can see this chlorophyl from space the same way as we can see
the plants in the land. We can see this chlorophyl from space.
The more green there is, the more phytoplankton there is in the ocean.
So this technology is really not that new.
We have we've been observing ocean for over 20 years now
just by looking at a certain set of colors so we can see the green,
we can see a couple of blues, we can see a couple of reds.
And from there we can say,
there is this much phytoplankton in the ocean.
But what PACE is bringing along is that it’s going to be able
to see so many different colors.
So roll back into your backyard.
We have different plants, different roses or whatever.
You have lots of different plants that have different colors, no?
I live in the desert, so there are several species of plant,
but there aren’t that many species of plant.
Just imagine that like, you know, anza-borrego after the rain,
that beautiful bloom of everything,
and in the ocean, you have it's very similar situations
where you have a bunch of different phytoplankton has different colors,
and these pigments do not just pretty things, but they really help
for that transfer of energy.
So PACE is going to be able to see all these different colors.
So currently we see green, if we want to talk about, you know, like
how much food is there in the ocean, we can say that now,
but we cannot say what type of food is in the ocean, what type of phytoplankton
is there and how is it impacting, you know, the carbon flow in the ocean.
So many different important questions that we have. Yes.
So how does the amount and type of phytoplankton in the ocean
determine ocean health?
What does that really tell us?
Yeah, knowing that there are lots of tiny little creatures in the sea,
what does that mean?
So, you know, like on one side, phytoplankton
is the the base of marine food web.
Now we want to have a good amount of phytoplankton to support the livelihood
of all these other things.
You know, this like, you know, really cool megafauna
that we care about, you know, dolphins and whales and manatees down in Florida.
So we want to have this this phytoplankton
present there and we want to have diversity of phytoplankton.
We also want to have phytoplankton present there because it gives
a really big ecosystem service to the climate of the ocean.
So phytoplankton captures that carbon and while feeding the rest of the ocean,
actually removes some of the carbon from the atmosphere and controls the climate.
But ultimately, when you think about ocean health-- sorry, go ahead.
Well, actually, that's just a question of
when we talk about the oceans absorbing carbon, because I mean, you know,
I've read statistics about climate change and stuff that oceans absorb
most of what humans have dumped into the atmosphere
over the last hundred years.
Fifty percent, yeah.
So is that through phytoplankton, is that what you're describing?
Like when we talk about oceans absorbing carbon, how much is that through phytoplankton
and through other things eating phytoplankton?
Yeah.
So, so there's, there's two different systems in the ocean.
Majority of this anthropogenic carbon that we are talking about
is actually absorbed through ocean itself, through the water of the ocean, no?
So you just have a physical process of diffusion
And that’s the ocean acidification? --and that takes the anthropogenic.
Yeah.
What phytoplankton does, phytoplankton really likes they like a natural carbon.
Carbon that comes from the natural sources, the carbon that is already there.
But just by doing so, by removing this carbon from the surface
of the ocean, it allows more carbon to enter inside.
So it's not directly eating the anthropogenic
carbon, it's not taking that one, but it's removing the other one
so the anthropogenic carbon can come inside.
But what is more important, so it’s really good,
you know, remove that carbon, puts it into sugars, either dies
and then sinks deep into the ocean and removes that carbon
from that contact with the atmosphere, therefore
leaving that space open for more carbon to come in.
Or it shoves it like, you know, laterally into the fishes and rest of the
and things in the ocean that ultimately poop
and then the poop sinks down and once again you're removing that carbon.
So it's, it's a really interesting process where you have biology
just kind of making space for the physics to pull down that anthropogenic carbon.
that kind of like explaining it?
Yeah, no, totally, totally. -Awesome.
I mean I guess that brings me back to the bigger questions about PACE.
So, so what's the key differentiator like, well, what's what's new?
It's just that the camera is much nicer,
so you get great resolution on what exactly is in the ocean?
Yeah, Yeah.
And that's sort of sounds like, Yeah, well,
you know, like you can go down and like get a better iPhone
and then whatever phone, but it's a big deal for us.
You know, like for, for 20 years
we've been staring at the ocean and seeing in five or six colors
and it couldn't tell you if it's a, if it's an oak forest or is it a meadow.
You know, or is it a desert blooming?
With PACE I'm going to be able to tell you that.
And it's really important because think about yourself.
You can't eat peas all the time, you know, the specific diet,
and you want to know what is there to be offered. So...
That's a good
analogy, differentiating between the desert in bloom versus
a meadow because it’s like fundamentally different ecosystems, completely different.
But you're right, viewed from above, you just be like it’s a bunch of green. Like it all looks the same.
Exactly.
It could be a lawn, could be a meadow, could be a desert after a big rain.
Could be your desert now blooming.
And the ocean does have, you know, jungles and deserts and stuff
we just don't think about.
And we really never thought about it until we had a vision
of of of, of ocean from the, from the space.
That's pretty much the first time where like, you know,
when you look at these animations
that NASA has, you see this like blooms like pulsating, you know.
In North Atlantic along the coast and stuff like that.
And that's the vantage point of space.
This is where we start to understand so much better.
You know, the the the
not just the vastness, but the diversity of the ecosystems and the ocean.
And, you know, and this is just the beginning.
We just see the base of the food chain.
And then you can just imagine everything else that happens
in three dimensions of the ocean in a sense.
It's pretty cool.
Yeah. Yeah.
So what are you most excited about with the PACE mission?
Which aspect of PACE mission gets you fired up?
So, so, you know, there's there's lots of human impact
when it comes to PACE you know, like harmful algal blooms
and all these things, you know, fisheries in coastal area, aquaculture.
I'm an open ocean girl, I'm a carbon girl.
I'm really, really, really interested in understanding
how the diversity of the phytoplankton.
So like, you know, the community that you see in your blooming desert
impacts the flow of carbon.
I'm really working on that whole story
that we spoke about is, you know, where is the carbon going to end up?
Because ultimately the diversity of the phytoplankton
community in the surface will determine the path of that carbon.
And once I understand that, we can work with modelers
and modelers can put that in their bigger system models and
and then give us, you know, like a better opportunity to understand
what's going to be happening down the line not just for the oceans,
but also for the whole Earth system, because everything is interconnected.
So that's where I am.
And I think that's that's something that we talk about,
just getting more data to put in the models.
That's something I sort of realized on our expedition in Greenland.
Where I was describing launching a little NASA probe with the OMG.
You know, it was just like a little little metal cylinder that bobs up and down
and measures temperature and salinity
in the fjord and kind of helps determine how much the ocean is melting
the glaciers or vice versa, how much water is coming from each.
And you know, you're like, it's just one tiny,
tiny little device that just adds data to,
you know, it made me realize
how much modern science is just tons and tons of data. Yep.
Trying to paint a more full image of how the world actually works.
And so when you talk about a mission like PACE, or talk about OMG and like
launching this little temperature and salinity probe,
you're like, it's not as if one instrument is is doing the thing.
It's not like the one instrument is, you know,
making key discoveries by itself necessarily,
but it's helping to determine, I don't know.
It just made me realize that the vastness of science now.
It, it takes a lot of data to sort of understand very complex systems.
Yeah. And you know, I'm a biologist by training.
I started as a biologist, like, you know, doing classical biological
things, you know,
looking at the things in the microscope, looking at the little like,
you know, foxes running into the forest and stuff.
And as I was going up, you know, through my, you know,
my training, I've been turning myself more and more towards data.
You know, I still go in ocean, I still collect samples and still,
you know, throw these little probes similar to the ones that you have,
you know, throw in to see temperature and salinity because again, temperature
salinity defines the ecosystem in which my phytoplankton lives.
There's such a thorough data out there and the more data we get with
that allows us to better focus on the things that we don't understand.
So like, you know, PACE is going to give us like currently--to
step back--currently we know from the current ocean
color satellites that there's a big change happening in the ocean.
There’s certain types of oceans,
the certain portions of the oceans that are getting greener, you know, rapidly.
And we can just say that
they're getting greener because we can’t see different colors.
But with PACE we're going to be able to look at those portions
of the ocean and understand is there just only a change
in the number of the phytoplankton, or is it also actually community changing?
Because going back, you know, like if you have a specific thing that depends
and likes to eat, only peas and peas are disappearing, we have a problem.
So like, you know, every new data set,
I mean, every new vastness of data allows us to focus better on the problem.
And yeah, there's the more data we have, the better decisions we can make.
And what you're describing there like this species composition sort of thing.
I mean that's kind of like the
algal blooms, like from and from like agricultural runoff and things
where it just kills an entire area because of the wrong-- Yes, Yes.
And that's one of the things that's
one of the things that we're going to be able to see.
So think about, you know,
like you have the coast of California, I went to grad school there.
You know, you have this red bloom, a red tide blooms, or you have this
like diatoms pseudo-nitzschia blooms that make birds and sea
mammals kind of like a little bit cuckoo because it has a toxin
that impacts their brain.
So so
by looking at it from space, if we can see it early,
we can send a warning to the local, you know, like mammal
society, decision makers, surfers and everybody who they kind of like lives.
I mean, surfers.
I mean, like they're there, they're out there.
You didn't want them to be more cuckoo than they are, no?
So so but you know and you would be surprised
how much of that coastal communities
actually plugged into our data, you know, because we really work hard
to have those type of communities they're dependent on the ocean.
The coastal communities have access to this data that we produce.
We've been working for the last three years really closely
with people like surfers, aquaculture people, fishermen, policy makers
to actually start using PACE data the same second they come out
so they can make this informed decision about ooh,
there's a harmful algal bloom coming.
We should maybe not, you know, pick oysters for like two weeks
so we don't kill anybody who's going to eat those oysters and things like that.
So that's all interconnected. Yep.
I feel like the
PACE mission needs to chat with more professional surfers.
Like why did you get a rock climber, like, I'm into,
you know, mountains and glaciers.
We will make a surfer out of you
like you go, you know, like I was like, you know, at one point
you going to start exploring other spheres
of the Earth then, you know, like, we're in the ocean,
we welcome you, you know. But everything is interconnected,
you know, like ocean controls in a sense climate.
It controls a big portion, the cycle of the water.
You can't climb if everything is wet, it gets slippery
and you fall and you don't want to fall.
So all these things-- --No, like I was saying
in my last two big expeditions that were both for National Geographic
TV shows, this summer was to Alaska, the summer before was to Greenland,
but both of them involve boats to navigate fjords.
Both of them
went through, you know, basically the local communities all rely on fishing.
So it's,
you know, just makes your remember how much of the world is dependent.
And then also, I mean, just with Arctic glaciers
retreating, I mean, that is sea level rise, and that determines--
I mean, that's like hundreds of millions
people around the Earth that are affected by by oceans rising.
And so no matter, you know, I live in a desert.
I mostly climb rocks.
And so I don't often think about the ocean necessarily, but, you know,
as soon as you go on an expedition,
as soon as you really think about it, you're like the entire coast.
I mean, that's you know, it's hundreds of millions of humans that are affected by
what goes on at the oceans.
Yeah.
And in a sense, you know, like again,
you know, you live in the desert, you climb and so on.
But think about just like economically,
there's a big portion of the protein coming from the ocean.
Remove that source of protein.
Now you have an impact from the rest of the,
you know, protein sources on the land.
So even if you don't eat fish, if you don't if you don't like fish,
you don't care about the ocean, stuff like that. There's
so many different routes that ocean, you know, that that's going to impact
you. Just think about ocean transport.
There's so, so, so many different things.
I mean, ultimately, you know, for many of us, ocean is just not livelihood.
Ocean is like, you know, part of our cultural heritage.
I come from the coastal community.
My parents come from two islands.
It's just part of everything,
you know, everything what I do, is comes, starts and ends with the ocean.
Weather is associated with the ocean.
The stories associate with the ocean.
So, you know, ocean makes so many-- so much strong impact
on all us around the Earth,
regardless if we're close to the ocean or living in a desert like you are.
And maybe the most underappreciated aspect, like you're saying,
if it's absorbed 50% of the anthropogenic carbon.
And that's something that's sort of nobody thinks about.
I mean, the ocean is taking for granted as a as a
repository for waste and for absorbing waste into the atmosphere and just kind of
it's like a big emptiness that that helps clean
that we never really think of, and, you know, sort of take for granted.
Yeah, yeah. It's ocean.
You don't see it far away from my eyes, far away from the mine.
But it's there is big and it's controlling pretty much everything we do.
So is there anything else you think I should know about the PACE mission?
I mean-- It's pretty awesome.
We’ve really covered the “P,” the phytoplankton,
but is there anything else we should touch on?
We should touch on the “A” and “C,” yeah.
So aerosols and clouds.
I can say a little bit about that if you're interested.
So and this might be maybe more important for you.
So like, you know, by having this amazing technology and that's,
I spoke of just one of the instruments, which is this Ocean Color Instrument,
this hyperspectral, we're going to have a two teeny tiny instruments on the side.
They're looking at the polarization of the light.
So like, you know, if you think about the light
and you put the sunglasses to stop the glare,
that's pretty much cutting out certain polarization aspects of the light.
It's kind of hard to explain.
But by looking at the polarization of the light,
we can get even more information about the little things
that live in the--I mean, the don't live--you know
the little things that are in the atmosphere.
So aerosols and clouds,
understanding the interaction between those and different types of on clouds
can really, really, really help us to understand
the role of atmosphere and those guys and climate.
We really kind of don't know too much about it.
And PACE is really with with the suite of instruments that it has,
not just a main one can really answer and, you know, give us answer to those
really big questions about role of that, our aerosols in clouds and climate,
but ultimately rolling back to human health.
It kind of like most of people think about this like,
I don't know, where were you during this Canadian fires?
Probably back in the desert, and you didn't really care about them,
but we were like, choking out of here. --This summer?
Yeah, Yeah.
You know, actually.
So the expedition that I was on, it ended with a boat in Alaska,
and we were getting to this peak in Alaska,
but we actually started by bicycling from Colorado.
So we bicycled from there in Colorado up to the Canadian border,
and they got in a boat and sailed up into southeast Alaska.
So we actually biked like right through the center of a lot of those fires.
But just by sheer good fortune happened to nail like this five day weather window.
And we kind of like managed to thread the needle and it all worked out for us.
And so we actually weren't too impacted by fires,
but we were sort of threatened by them the entire time.
And and, you know, had a few days of heavy smoke.
But generally we were like, it was pretty crazy.
It was it was disgusting and like biking through that, it's a no-no.
I mean, like, we couldn't go out here for a couple of days in D.C.
and I can just not imagine it was further up north.
So those kind of things, I mean, like looking at back
at the climate change and things they will be happening in the future.
However much we wish them not happening, they will be happening.
These kind of events
are going to be happening more and more, and PACE is going to be able to observe
that information and give kind of like
better source of data, better information about you know,
where does that those those type of aerosols are going to go?
How are they going to merge?
How are they going to change?
And ultimately, how is that going to impact,
you know, our livelihood and livelihood of the rest of the ecosystem?
We think about ourselves.
But, you know, what about the little creatures that live in the forest?
You know, like we can hide inside.
But yeah, so so there's lots of information
about both ocean and atmosphere that they're really getting and
getting those to together is really cool because they talk to each other, you know.
They exchange things, you know.
Like think about volcano, it drops certain things in the ocean
and that's food and the phytoplankton bloom.
And there's so many cool stories that are going to come out of it.
So, yeah, that's another thing that you should know about PACE.
Actually, maybe two more really basic questions about PACE.
One, how long is this supposed to last?
Like how long is the mission?
That's a great question.
There is an official length of a mission, and unofficial length of a mission.
Officially, I think we are on the books to last for three years.
And one of the media people might correct me in the one,
but unofficially it has the fuel to last for a very long time.
So, for example, the mission that is currently operating is called
MODIS, MODIS Aqua.
That's a really important mission
that is once again looking at the color of the Earth.
That one was launched in the same way, but it was launched 20 years ago.
So we say three years.
Ultimately, we hope we're going to be lasting really, really long time
and keep on giving this information to all of us to do some cool science.
So you're saying that that NASA's satellites are a lot like every other home
applicance where your warranty is for
like five or ten years, but you hope that will last for 30?
You just hope that it keeps working as long as possible. --Yeah, pretty, pretty much.
And we know that is going to
last a long time, but it's like, okay, this is not going to end up anywhere.
Okay. Three years is right. Thank you, Kate.
This part is going to be cut out.
It's just the level of bureaucracy that it takes from taking the mission from
three years to five years would put such a financial over, you know,
drain on the system.
This this won’t cut out.
I think that's an important thing, though, is that
I mean, because that's was true in all aspects
of human life, in that you can only even on the guarantee a few years.
But you can sort of hope for more. And you can assume that it’s going to work.
Exactly.
I mean, wasn't that true for the Mars rover, whatever? Didn’t that last way longer than it was supposed to?
That’s true for every mission that is put out there.
We always put extra fuel.
We always like, you know, the amount of fuel--we
just fueled the satellite, which is a really exciting. No.
And if you think about a majority of the fuel is actually going to be used
to burn the satellite when it’s coming back to the atmosphere.
So it doesn't like land somewhere in the middle of the desert.
But that small percentage of the fuel that's going to be used there
to kind of like control its orbit can last for ten years or more
if we're like really smart and just find smart,
smart people working in NASA, and they're going
to, you know, spin around and use it other different ways
to control that orbit, not to spend it all that fuel.
And instruments in theory, you know, even if they start degrading
and we have put so many different
checks in system that we can, even with the degrading instruments,
we can still do good to science because, you know, we calibrate against the Sun
Moon, calibrate against the Moon, recalibrate
against some spots in the ocean where we have these buoys that you talked about.
So, you know, it can last if you take care of it
like your home appliance, it can last for very long time.
Totally.
And you have a bunch of the smartest people in the world taking care of it.
So you’re like, ah. Yeah. It's probably going to last pretty well.
Actually that maybe brings me to my most basic question,
which I probably should've started with, but the PACE mission,
I mean, so we're just referring to a satellite that orbits the Earth?
Yes, it's a satellite, but it’s a very cute satellite? --Like the PACE mission is one object?
How big is the satellite? Like, what is it?
So imagine two suburban
mom minivans plumped together.
That's your size.
So like and it looks like a cube.
And then on top, actually on the side,
if I sit up here,you have the big instrument, called Ocean Color Instrument.
And this one is pretty large.
You know, it's going to like as this and it kind of sits on top of that box.
And then the two, two other satellites--the
two other instruments, the polarization ones,
the polarimeter ones, those are the CubeSats.
So know what a CubeSat is?
That’s a teeny tiny satellites that launch in space independently.
Everybody can launch them.
So we took those and we attached them to the satellite.
So these are the these are made not by NASA.
So these are made by the collaborators, either in Netherlands
or here at University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
And so we just attached them there and connected to the you know,
to the to the computer of the of the satellite.
And what are those satellites for?
So those are the instruments.
So those are predominantly going to be looking--so instruments on the satellite,
they're going to be-- they’re teeny tiny satellites.
But we kind of attach them to the big satellite.
They're going to be looking mostly at atmosphere,
but we're hoping we're going to be able to kind of like
check out the ocean a little bit with them as well.
So it's sort of modular.
You have like the main NASA instrument and then you add other
sort of add-on features.
It’s like adding lenses onto a camera or something like that.
In a sense.
In a sense, think about like, you know, going back to the buoy that you deployed
in Greenland, that buoy can have a bunch of different instruments.
So the one that you'd probably deployed had, I think
temperature, salinity, oxygen probably, and maybe something else.
So you can attach instruments and once you're building the satellite,
which is pretty much, you know, like your home for all these instruments,
if other other agencies have an instrument, they want to contribute.
Very often NASA's works with other, you know, agencies or institutions
because very expensive, you know, to launch a thing in space.
So you just kind of attach things.
That's actually maybe the biggest lesson that I learned from that expedition
to Greenland was how much, you know, because we were in the most remote part
of eastern Greenland, the middle of nowhere,
and it's really hard to get there, it’s really expensive to get there.
And so we had a scientist with us, Heidi Sevestre, who's a French glaciologist,
and she was basically executing sort of experiments for universities
all over the world because it's just so hard for people to get there.
And so it made me realize that a lot of science is that opportunity.
It’s like,
if somebody is going to a place, then like send them, send them a PDF of the experiment
that you want them to do and they’ll like, bring you back some data.
So it's funny to hear that even at the highest levels of science,
like NASA’s sending satellites to space, there's still some other universities,
it’s like, Hey, let us just like tack on an extra little piece on your satellite
so we can get some data too.
Yeah.
And again, it's not as opportunistic as, you know,
like there's there's lots of reviews and things, but,
but it's pretty much that's how science works. You know, like it's
how important it is, you know, like
there is only a certain amount of money that is going to come our way, going
on, on field, going in space is extremely expensive.
So, like, you know,
--Understandably so. --I’ve been to Greenland myself--I’m sorry
I said “understandably so.”
I mean, it's you know,
it sounds like basically the hardest thing
you can imagine doing is sending something into orbit and then keeping it in orbit.
And like all the instruments involved, it
totally makes sense that if you're doing all that work,
somebody else should be should be reaping some benefit from it as well to like learn more in a different way.
And exactly the same way as in the field, You know, like it's
every time you go in a field, you're collecting your stuff and then you're
collecting water and samples for so many, many, many more people
because it's just yeah, it's once you going there, you know, bring everybody
along and make sure that everybody really benefits of this once
in a lifetime opportunity.
Like in ocean we don't get that many satellites, especially ocean biology.
The last one we got was what, 20 years ago.
So like, you know, it's a good opportunity to jump on the board.
Totally, totally. Well cool,
well, thank you so much for taking the time, and I appreciate chatting,
yeah, good luck with the mission. Hope you guys learn a lot.
Thank you.