Fresno planetary scientist draws lessons on climate change from space exploration
April 22, 2021
It’s Feb. 18 and my co-workers and I anxiously watch as the Mars 2020 Rover, Perseverance, approaches the Martian atmosphere. Our mission is to capture an image of the 70-foot-wide supersonic parachute that will slow the rover during descent onto Mars. Millions of people around the globe are watching via live stream as we operate the high-resolution camera, HiRISE, aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Traveling at 6,750 mph, the extreme distance and high speeds of the two spacecraft created challenging conditions that required precise timing so the rover was viewable by HiRISE at just the right moment. This interplanetary action-shot required arduous amounts of collaboration, calculations, and specialized software, but the result is awe-inspiring.
As a planetary scientist, I see space exploration as a way to understand where we come from. It allows us to learn how life began, and what it might be like in extreme environments.
We know that the Earth has gone through drastic changes over its long history. While “life” in general has survived, the type of life that survives is always that which has adapted and thrived in a changing world. The relative climatic calm on the Earth for the last 2,000 years has allowed humans to become a technologically and culturally advanced species. Unfortunately for us, that calm has ended. Severe and unprecedented weather events have overwhelmed the U.S. in the last few years: catastrophic flooding in the Midwest, large-scale fires in the West, the polar vortex causing record-breaking freezes in Texas this year.
Recent trends of severe weather are telling us that we need to prepare for a future that will be unfamiliar. This means societal and infrastructure change on many levels — economically, socially, and politically. However, humans have a great survival advantage for facing climate change. We have grown a collective base of knowledge to innovate in ways that would have seemed pure fiction a hundred years ago. From my own experience working on active spacecraft missions, I know that when a community of people come together around a common idea, we can face any challenge and succeed.
The vast majority of scientists and Americans agree that climate change is real, caused by excessive carbon emissions, and will have serious impacts on the health and livelihoods of themselves and their loved ones. While some industries are already reducing their carbon emissions, others will not move forward until there is a plan to incentivize them. Putting a gradually rising fee on emissions from coal, oil, and gas will drive down carbon pollution because energy companies and leading industries will innovate toward cleaner, cheaper options.
It is a lofty goal to cut carbon emissions to stabilize our climate, while allowing us to carry on with the benefits that abundant energy has given us. This goal may feel as unattainable as landing on the moon once did. In the 1960s, President Kennedy’s famous “Moon Speech” at Rice University in Texas about the space program inspired a nation to explore new horizons and technology. Our country has led exploration into space, and this race towards a clean energy future is our generation’s moonshot. As the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo missions and 51st anniversary of Earth Day is Thursday, I reflect on JFK’s famous words half a century ago and compare the race to the moon to the challenge of climate change:
Why should we lead innovation towards a clean energy future? Not because it is easy, but because it is hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one we must accept, one we cannot postpone, and one in which we intend to succeed. We have our future, and the future of every living thing on this Earth at stake; this is not a race we can lose.
Singleton Thibodeaux-Yost lives in Fresno and holds a bachelor’s in art and an master’s in geology from Fresno State. She works remotely for the University of Arizona as an operations engineer for the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
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