The speaker frames the Golden Goose Award as validation of a decades-long US bet on Earth observation satellites, dating back to investments in the 1980s and 1990s to build large observatories and track the planet as a system. That steady, carefully maintained data record is now positioned as the foundation for a new era of AI-driven predictive modeling of risk, and the speaker stresses that NASA Earth science is now one player within a broader ecosystem of data users rather than the sole controller of it.
- 01
The speaker describes the satellites built from this investment as being the size of school buses.
- 02
The speaker notes that scientists do not usually get involved in demonstrating public value through formal certifications and reviews, but did so for this award.
- 03
The speaker says that for every Black Marble project there are a hundred other NASA Earth scientists producing results with direct impact on people's lives.
578 words · auto-generated from the episode video
40:58>> Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I wanted to ask you, you know, now you're we're about to go to the Library of Congress um for the ceremony. What is what does winning this award mean for for you, for your team? You know, you've been working on this for what, like, uh 10 almost 15 years now? 15 years since that um the Ramadan photo at least. It's been a long time. >> I'm sure you didn't start expecting to win an award. I don't think anyone does. Um, but but what does it mean that that you're you're getting recognized like this? >> I think it validates something that our leaders at NASA have
41:38been saying for a long time, which is we have given we have produced a very amazing capabilities, not just black marble, but earth science in general, the fleet of NASA satellites. And we're going through this evolution because now one of our leaders says we're part of a broader ecosystem where you know there are many different actors and the thing about being part of the ecosystem is you don't no longer control the ecosystem. And it's a huge success story that our nation made a big bet around investing in Earth observations
42:22back in the '9s and ' 80s, you know, and different administrations came in and said, "Let's do a big B. Let's understand Earth as a system. >> Let's build large observatories the size of school buses. >> Let's deploy. Let's try to get all the and now we have all this data pride into the next chapter of us if our our next big bet which is AI and and and you know digit digital moanization all this we have we're one of the few countries in the world that has what matters in order to be able to have predictive um understandings of the future which is
43:04gold highly pristinely maintained highly integral product because with AI you know how it works garbage in garbage out >> yeah yeah yeah 100% worse garbage art >> exactly but with but the fact that we have produced and we had the foresight to know that maybe AI wasn't a thing back then but it is now >> and building metrics >> allowing people to create predictive understanding of risks and I wish we had that 15 years ago, but we didn't. But we had it now. I think that's what makes this award so special because it's really timed at a at a
43:46moment where our agency has shown and produced a lot of public value for an Asia. >> Mhm. Certainly >> a lot of times scientists don't get involved in that element of like hey how much you know we we you know we do the justifications we conduct reviews we do all that due diligence but to be able to represent our division in demonstrating the many thousands of times NASA earth science generates public value it's it's quite the privilege because we're not the only guys there are people who are who can monitor air quality at fine resolution,
44:26who can protect firefighters from the lines of fire using NASA satellites. There's so much going on and they picked us. But let me tell you, for every black marble, there's 100 other NASA Earth scientists out there who are just doing crazy stuff, thinking differently, and generating results that are directly impacting people's lives.
Remote SensingEarth ObservationEnergy AccessOpen Data