File:The Original Mission Statement of NASA.png

The Original Mission Statement of NASA

Quote: NASA's Mission, “To understand and protect our home planet..."

Congressman George E. Brown and the initial decades of US Earth Science from Space

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/George_E._Brown_Jr

The National Aeronautics and Space Act was signed into law on July 29, 1958.

In the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which established the agency in 1958, the first objective of the agency was listed as "the expansion of human knowledge of the earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space." -- https://www.nasa.gov/offices/ogc/about/space_act1.html

The Space Act has been amended many times since 1958 but these goals have been little changed. In NASA’s Authorization Act for 1985 the expansion of human knowledge “of the Earth” was added to goal 1 -- https://history.nasa.gov/spaceact-legishistory.pdf

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"We refer to the mission statement in all our research proposals that go out for peer review, whenever we have strategy meetings," said Philip B. Russell, a 25-year NASA veteran who is an atmospheric chemist at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "As civil servants, we're paid to carry out NASA's mission. When there was that very easy-to-understand statement that our job is to protect the planet, that made it much easier to justify this kind of work."

Since 1972, when NASA launched the first Landsat satellite to track changes on the earth's surface, the agency has been increasingly involved in monitoring the environment..

• https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/science/nasas-goals-delete-mention-of-home-planet.html

The "understand and protect" phrase was cited repeatedly by James E. Hansen, a climate scientist at NASA...

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Hansen-testimony-1988.jpg

50 plus years of Landsat

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Landsat_data_users_handbook

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GreenPolicy360 continues its campaign to restore the original Earth Sciences mission language into today's operating NASA Mission Statement.

Background:

For a number of years now, since Planet Earth science goals were removed 'quietly' from the Mission Statement in 2005 during the George W. Bush administration, a legacy of Earth Observation progrtams have continued since the 1960s. Concurrently, your GreenPolicy360 founder has followed the initial proposals of Earth Science led by Representative George E. Brown on the House science, technology and space committee. NASA's Earth observation programs, and the technology developed, are now in full bloom with an Earth System Observatory and Earth Observing System (EOS).

Over four decades of Earth science, technology and a first generation of Earth imaging, data and study had put in place a foundation for all future generations to continue as we, humanity, planet citizens, continue the mission.

Protecting and preserving our home planet is also a continuing GreenPolicy360 mission, a "Living Earth" call to action of Green values and politics that launched, it can be said in the 1960s. Our collaborative work, we called it "teach-ins" back in the day, was highlighted in the public imagination in December 1968, the famed "Earthrise" image of Earth, that was featured on the cover of Look Magazine in January 1968.

Ours is a Whole Earth vision, an Earth Systems approach to understanding the science that enable seeing, whether via LIDAR or our own eyes, whether via snapshots time-stamped and shared, or vast databases of dynamic, changing Earth/Atmospheric/Ocean science that enables us, community by community, nation by nation, to navigate into the future.

The campaign to revisit, remember and restore, with renewed emphasis, the original NASA Earth Science Mission is here and now, as multiple challenges, often now described as 'existential', threatening life on Earth.

Our efforts to bring back Earth Science language into the NASA Mission Statement didn't make it into this week's NASA Earth Sciences Advisory Committee meeting, our hope is that in the not too distant future, the annual/quarterly NASA advisory meetings will take up the ongoing Planet Earth Mission as the Earth Sciences Mission is going on ...

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Hello former FL Senator-current NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, Dr. Sara Tucker

Earth Science Advisory Committee (ESAC), Science Mission Directorate, NASA Advisory Council (NAC)

The reality of Earth Science should once again be a highlight and focus of NASA's Mission Statement.

Please see the attached re: the Original NASA Mission Statement. Please consider our call to renew and update the Earth Sciences language.

Thank you and Onward!

GreenPolicy360

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Earth_and_Space,_Politics

NASA ADVISORY COUNCIL

Science Committee | May 31-June 1, 2023

NASA Advisory Council Agenda May31-Jun 1 2023.pdf

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