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A New Perspective

I got glasses. Not sunglasses , not cool shades to wear on a boat or a deck with friends in shorts and gym shoes. Actual glasses – ones that make the fuzzy world sharper again, make us look and feel older, and ones that allow me to read books again with ease. I did not want glasses, but I needed them.

Even though I had noticed a slow deterioration of my eyesight during the years prior, I never had glasses or contacts my entire life and throughout the past year, when I started staring at monitors 8+ hrs per day.

We all struggled over the past year in more ways than one, but the part that was most discouraging for me personally was the increasing lack of sharpness in my eyesight up close and over time also at computer distances. Finally, and being fully vaccinated, there was no escape – I signed up with one of the local eye doctors and got glasses. They work like magic.

With this experience, I have been thinking a lot about getting better vision, and primarily from two perspectives – about getting old, and correcting a perspective that got out of whack.

With the death of my good parents and so many friends and mentors especially during the past year, I have been becoming more aware that I am getting older. More people ask me for my opinion now then when I was young. As a result of this, I have been thinking a lot about the important difference between having experiences and having wisdom.

Being older, we have seen more situations, we have experienced more leaders – good and bad ones, and we have observed ideas of all quality levels show back up after 10+ years, pushed by people who are not aware of their sorry history. We have read more books and listened to speeches – both trivial and profound ones. We so often sit in meetings and notice that have more experience than most in the room! But, do we have wisdom?

Wisdom is not the sum of our experiences, but the ability to see within these experiences principles and values of broader applicability and potential to improve the human condition. It takes much work to gain wisdom from experiences – deep reflection, and thoughtful and iterative analyses of self and others.

Instead, as we get older, we risk looking at the world in ways that are decreasingly flexible like the lenses in my eyes. We are sure we know! We may blend out entire spaces or only look at them with such prejudice that learning cannot occur at all. We do not feel comfortable facing questions anymore, questions that broaden our field of vision. Instead, we look at ever less with ever more certainty. And we do not notice that we may have experiences but lack wisdom.

So, as I get used to my new glasses, I also want to broaden my field of view and be open to new perspectives. I want to read more, listen to podcasts, meet different people, and learn from them. In doing this, I try to not just get older and more experienced, but to further gain wisdom that affect positivity those I encounter each day and others, too.

I like my new glasses because they remind me to keep a close eye on my perspective!

Marking the Earth Observing Dashboard’s One-Year Anniversary with a Hackathon

As the COVID-19 pandemic began to rage last year, I thought about how NASA could marshal its resources to help benefit people worldwide. We know that Earth observations provide us with a satellite view of our home planet and offer a unique perspective on any number of macro changes happening here on Earth. So together with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), we combined resources to strengthen our understanding of the effects of the global pandemic. As a result, we unveiled the Earth Observing Dashboard in June 2020. I am really proud of this effort because the dashboard offers the public access to an array of COVID-related Earth observation data captured by the three space agencies. It allows anyone to see, from a satellite-view, the effects that COVID-19 is having on our economies, our environment, shipping patterns and more around the globe.

June 2021 marks the one-year anniversary of the dashboard’s creation. We thought a great way to commemorate the occasion would be to host a global hackathon and invite participants to tackle challenges related to the intriguing data contained in the dashboard. If you’ve ever been curious about how people’s shopping behaviors changed during COVID, or how the lockdown orders affected carbon dioxide levels or water quality, check out the dashboard. If you’re interested in solving challenges using this data or helping to improve the dashboard itself, we would welcome your participation in the Earth Observation Dashboard Hackathon from June 23-29, 2021.

To give you some examples, the dashboard includes a nighttime lights indicator derived from the Suomi-NPP Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), which shows how the pandemic lockdown measures affected businesses, highways, and nightlife by revealing changes in light activity at night by tracking changes in energy use, migration and transportation activity patterns.

Second, when the pandemic impacted the ability of governments to perform in-person field surveys to monitor the progress of food crops, Earth observation-based data used for the Global Agricultural Monitoring Initiative (GEOGLAM) Global Crop Monitor provided evidence and reassurance that the food supply was adequate from afar.

Also, some parts of the world are currently experiencing lockdowns due to the second wave of COVID-19. The dashboard shows human activity slowdown (SAR Proxy maps) and a similar environmental response (NO2) to the second lockdown as the first one. Data collected and carefully curated for these waves of COVID-19 periods could provide further insights into environmental responses and economic impacts.

As countries continue to battle COVID-19, I am proud that the dashboard can be a tool that enables people and governments to better understand how the pandemic is affecting our world. I hope that seeing the impacts of COVID from such a vantage point can help spur innovation and spark new ideas. I hope you will join us for the hackathon!

Modernizing Science Websites

More so than ever, our Science Mission Directorate (SMD) websites are the front-door to our worldwide community of enthusiasts and learners. Upon an in-depth analysis of our web presence, I believe it is time for us to elevate the way we communicate and enhance the breadth of our audiences using a focused approach on great content, and best-in-class optimization techniques. As will all of our communication activities, we will do this as one team, and driven by the desire to enhance the impact and inspiration of our science throughout. This is a core-element of our NASA Science strategy, which focuses deliberately on inspiration and communication.

Soon after being established, NASA was directed by the U.S. Congress to “provide for the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and the results thereof.” NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) has an extensive public web presence, from the flagship website https://science.nasa.gov to mission-specific sites to topic-based websites. As sources from which people get their information change, NASA Science must continue to ensure its message is easy to find, available to all, leveraged, and managed per federal and Agency policies and procedures.

For NASA Science, we deeply care about communicating in audience-appropriate language and enabling science enthusiasts and learners of all ages to actively participate in science. Among the several types of opportunities for such engagements are exciting research, student collaborations, challenges, citizen science, science activation projects, and others. Disseminating such information is key and with the expectations for digital content being raised every more, NASA Science must embrace these changes and modernize our web presence to reach the widest possible audience and share our message.

Recently, our social media presence went through a major refresh, with a more focused and aligned effort that resulted in higher followership for these accounts and broader engagement. It has been a great success thus far with enhanced visibility for our project, new audiences we gained as a result of it, and larger user engagements per post than before. And we are still learning to improve and elevate the game. Now, we plan to do the same for our web presence.

As part of an agency-wide modernization and consolidation of NASA websites, SMD will unify its public engagement websites under a newly designed and freshly built https://science.nasa.gov, consistent with social themes. Sites in scope of this effort include those with the extension *.nasa.gov in their URL which are mostly funded by SMD. Types of websites include public engagement deep dive sites, programmatic sites, and science sites for kids. Websites that are not part of this current consolidation include those sites whose main purpose is to serve data to the science community (we will address these at a later date), sites that are hosted at partner institutions (i.e. hubblesite.org), and sites where SMD is just one of the funding sources. This strategic approach will enhance user experience and allow NASA Science and its broad impact on society to be seen and appreciated by more. The main goals will be to:

be an example of excellence in public trust in science exploration, discovery, and knowledge
timely, secure, accurate, and audience-focused dissemination of NASA Science content
ensure that top entities – person, place, thing – never compete with each other, but instead enhance each other
ensure site owners have a robust platform and tools they need to innovate and share development using a “One Team” approach
improve search rankings and search engine optimization (SEO)
build a robust multimedia database capable of housing all the media NASA Science produces, including spacecraft raw images, data-driven interactives and large-file videos.
ensure the site is responsive and functions well on devices of varying sizes (i.e. cell phone, tablet, laptops, desktop, and what may show up next as technology changes)
design a site that exceeds the Section 508 requirements and provides a truly accessible experience for the widest audience possible

Rest assured, there will be flexibility built into this process. In particular, we want to encourage content owners to pitch new tools, content, etc., and build them out on science.nasa.gov, as appropriate. We need all of our experts and our engaged champions to help shape the end state.

Soon, you will see these efforts taking shape across our websites – we do not want to drag this out. We recognize, of course, that this process will take significant effort and will take many months to complete. As we proceed, remember that having great content is an important starting point of a great site. However, equally important is ensuring people can find our content.

As mentioned before, this SMD-wide effort has one sole purpose – we all deeply care about communicating the value and excitement of science, and to do so by setting a new standard of excellence for science websites. And we can only be successful achieving this audacious goal by working together as one team!

Thanks for being part of this worthwhile effort!

Remembering the Past Year as a New Season Begins

It happened again this past weekend. I was excited about my refreshing spring run, the bird songs, the beautiful flowers, and I remembered how much she loves spring. I wanted to tell her I am thinking of her. I was reaching for the phone. And then I suddenly remembered that my mother is no longer with us.

I still read her loving messages she sent me from her iPad – a skill she insisted she would never learn, then struggled with, and eventually mastered. This is how she watched me when I was on TV. This is how she read most news about me and the whole word.

She had a whole book of clippings of news articles about me – I never knew that until the very end. And it surprised me because I had sensed little interest in my work before. Obviously, I had been wrong.

I have been thinking a lot about the 500,000+ US families and millions worldwide and the tens of millions of children and friends whose lives will not be the same anymore, changed by COVID. I think about the grandparent who left prematurely, the mothers who will never be grandmothers, the Holocaust survivors whose stories died with them, those who were freedom fighters, the courageous immigrants who were finally brought down.

I received my second vaccine a few days ago. I am deeply grateful for the scientists and those who helped produce this vaccine in record time. I am happy and hopeful that we can soon wake up from this nightmare we have been in for over a year.

And when this is part of the past, let’s not forget that the scars from this will be a reality for millions of families for years. They too will have gaping holes in their lives they struggle with. And they too will need time to heal and learn what it means to have fewer people on Earth who truly love them. They too will need help.

My condolences and thoughts to all of you who lost loved ones this past year! May you feel the love and friendship in your lives and may you have the courage to ask for help when needed!

P.S.: Check out this 80s song I re-discovered recently. I really needed help when it came out in as I feared I had lost my family forever, and it therefore spoke to me then. It again speaks to me today as we all need to learn to ask for help and learn to listen to others when they need help. Most don’t do it as beautifully as Tina Turner: https://youtu.be/4cro7kZKG2c

Stories of Perseverance

The most recent robotic inhabitant of our planetary neighbor Mars is called Perseverance, as anybody knows by now. Many people have talked about how fitting this name is, and especially how it makes us all feel. Perseverance – doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success – is a quality we all need, and especially during the past year.

Each of us have stories of Perseverance, and here is mine.

As the head of NASA science, it is my job to select or approve the name of Science missions, and I had the task yet again approximately a year before launch to select from tens of thousands of names submitted by children from all around. A great team of NASA colleagues had taken the thousands and reduced them to a handful of finalists. One name that immediately stuck out in my mind was Perseverance, submitted by Virginia middle schooler Alex Mather. In addition to the compelling nature of his submission, this name also spoke to me.

I had experienced in my life how challenging so many things were for me and I had long felt that perseverance was in every way as important in both innovation and exploration as are vision and curiosity. I was immediately leaning towards Perseverance, but that scared me, because I had learned that my fastest decisions were not always my best.

I therefore asked the Mars2020 program manager Matt Wallace for a favor that would stray us away from the way things are typically done in this process. I asked him to bring no more than 20 Mars2020 team members into a room for a strictly confidential discussion about naming the rover. I arrived at JPL after a horrendous trip and only a couple of hours of sleep and walked into this room. But, I was not the one who looked the most tired – some of the individuals had just come from a shift and looked exhausted.

I had a simple question to them: “if you had my job, which one of the name finalists would you choose?” After a hour long discussion, it was clear: the majority of them would choose Perseverance, just like me. I made the final decision within a day of this meeting: the Mars2020 rover would be known as Perseverance, a choice I never regretted since.

Within hours of my visit to JPL, I received three independent phone-calls from NASA leaders who were part of my meeting with the staff. “Perseverance is not inspiring and no one can spell it”, said one of them. Another one worried about what others would think about NASA or JPL: “People will think that you are sending a signal of mistrust. You are making it feel like we struggled with this mission.” My simple answer was: “Thanks for your input. Just one simple question: didn’t you struggle?” I knew the answer and it is the same for all missions. And one academic leader I deeply respect called me and asked me: “Do you know who selected this name? I can’t believe this. NASA is losing it.”

And then came mid-March when all of the US was shutting down due to COVID and we were getting ready for an exercise in perseverance the likes of which none of us bargained for.

On the first day of the shut-down and after observing some initial decisions, I made two phone calls. The first one was to my then boss Administrator Jim Bridenstine and I asked him for his support to make Perseverance of highest priority to NASA throughout COVID. My arguments were simple. First and foremost, I knew quickly that we were going to be in for the long haul and I also believed that the country and the world would need something to feel good about. With both a launch and a difficult landing, Perseverance was the best mission we had for that. Secondly, I pointed out that a delay of Perseverance would cost the tax payers a billion dollars or more. Jim was supportive and committed his full support in this manner.

My second phone call was even tougher than the first one. I called up Matt Wallace and I told him that I and the agency had every intent to make Mars2020 Perseverance a highest priority mission and that he could count on all the support from NASA. But, I asked for a commitment from him: “If you ever feel that it is no longer safe for our people, call me. I will stop the project with no questions asked.” Matt said he appreciated that and committed that he would do so. He added “I will be sure that our people are safer at work than they would be at home”. The numbers support that he did just that.

Needless to say – what Matt and the team did is nothing short of extraordinary. Everybody pulled in the same direction. The JPL engineers in integration and test gave personal sacrifice, sometimes being separated from their families for months. The software teams worked harder than ever before and under difficult conditions. JPL leaders built safe protocols for work and for testing, often ahead of the entire agency. And at headquarters we helped the team with full support, including research aircraft to be utilized to transport both cargo and key personnel for highest safety standards.

I have never felt more close to Matt and the entire JPL leadership team than during this. Similarly, the CEO of the United Launch Alliance was making a commitment to launch Mars2020/Perseverance safely and on time. We all talked regularly and founds ways forward.

Billions around the Earth have seen Perseverance land and thousands of journalists have talked about the name Perseverance and how fitting it is for 2021. The world has gotten to know some of the amazing team members and listened to their excitement and their stories of perseverance. And their work has inspired many with cities and municipalities turning lights to red in the US and around the world in celebration. Most eloquently, the US president talked what he felt in his congratulatory call to JPL.

Finally, since its almost miraculous launch and landing in the middle of COVID, there has been not one person who told me that Perseverance is the wrong name. Middle schooler Alex Mather was right all along: Perseverance is the most important quality in humans who want to explore!

Looking Back at the Last 25 Years

This week 25 years ago I got on a plane from Zurich to Chicago. I had sold my belongings in Switzerland, packed two suitcases, and shipped a few boxes of office supplies and books to Ann Arbor. I was excited to spend one or two years as a research fellow in the United States, improve my English, and then go back to Switzerland. I had a plan!

In part, I was trying to get away from personal problems and a complex family situation that had weighed on my spirit for years. I did not see eye to eye with my parents and especially not with my father, an evangelist and leader of a Christian fundamentalist church. He was a great man by all accounts, but I was a bitter disappointment to him – he had hoped I would take over his church as he got older. Be in the family business, so to say.

In part, I was pulled to the US to learn and explore new things. When getting on that plane that week, I could count on one hand all plane trips I had ever taken before. And, even though I did not know anything about the US, I was excited to jump in with both feet and learn.

I am glad I did not know that day that my time in the US would exceed 25 years (not the 1-2 years I was planning), that I would find love and a new home and eventually build a new family. In fact, If someone told me what was going to happen as I got on that plane – about my family, my career as a researcher, a professor and as a leader at NASA – I would have ridiculed their assertions. The move would have been much much tougher: I know how to make a decision to move for 1 year, but not for 25 years.

I would have worried about the wrong things and ignored what is most important. It turns out I was successful here not because I achieved the goals I had that week 25 years ago, but because I found new goals I could not have even dreamt of.

So, as I look back on these 25 years, I have two conclusions:

First, I have an overwhelming sense of gratitude to all who helped me during these 25 years and especially to the United States and its citizens who over and over again surprised me with generosity and love and an open spirit. Yes, I know we are a complex country with important challenges. But, I have never regretted making this my new home! I am a direct manifestation of the dreams and hope that continue to build America.

Secondly, I think about the value of planning, and especially the usefulness (or lack thereof!) of long-term plans. Whether it is career planning or long term life plans – overarching values matter, planning is good, but plans are useless because they miss one major ingredient: at a given time – and especially when we are young – we cannot even imagine all the possibilities that we will learn about later. Life is so much more surprising and richer than we can ever guess!

No, we do not need a long term plan for a happy and successful life. Instead, we need big leaps of faith and great people who support and love us along the way, whom we can support and love in return!

Thanks to all of you who have been and continue to be part of my adventure!

Welcoming NASA Science’s New Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration

I am happy to announce that I have made a selection to permanently fill the Science Mission Directorate’s position of Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration (DAAX). Dr. Joel Kearns will join us on February 1 to begin working with us and our stakeholders in this critical role at NASA Headquarters.

I would like to give my appreciation and thanks to Dr. Dave Burns, who has done an excellent job in keeping the Exploration Science Strategy and Integration Office (ESSIO) portfolio moving forward by developing and strengthening partnerships, strategies and activities for robotic and human exploration at the moon and beyond. Most notably, Dave has been instrumental in leading the efforts managing the Commercial Lunar and Payload Services initiative. Dave and the ESSIO team have been absolutely critical in the burgeoning lunar economy that will deliver payloads to the lunar surface at a cadence of approximately two per year beginning in 2021.

Joel has more than 32 years of experience in leadership roles at multiple NASA centers and in private industry. He is currently the director of Facilities, Test and Manufacturing at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. He leads efforts that encompass facility infrastructure, aerospace testing, flight research aircraft, on-site manufacturing and environmental management.

He previously served as the deputy director of GRC’s Space Flight Systems Directorate, providing executive direction of projects assigned to Glenn in human exploration and operations, space science and space technology

Joel also previously served as an executive at NASA Headquarters in human spaceflight, and at both the Ames Research Center in California and Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, where he worked on programs as varied as the space shuttle and SOFIA. He has also held positions in industry.

Joel was awarded the U.S. Government’s Presidential Rank of Meritorious Senior Executive in 2009. He is also an inventor on four patents for single crystal growth technology! We look forward to his insight and expertise as we move ahead with the many facets of critical work to return to the lunar surface.

A Dashboard and a Declaration

We all know what a tough year it’s been. At this year’s meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), however, it’s been great to see so much hope delivered by science, to see how much discovery and enthusiasm for exploring our world and our universe continue no matter what. The AGU always provides thought provoking presentations and discussions. But this year in particular, it demonstrates the power of science to bring us together as a community to explore unique questions and look at our planet and the cosmos through fresh eyes.

Our world’s quarantine for much of the year has resulted in some dramatic observations from our Earth orbiting satellites, and those findings have been on display with posters and presentations and many dialogues at AGU.

One thing I’m particularly proud of is a partnership in response to the global pandemic by NASA, ESA (European Space Agency), and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), who joined forces this summer to use the collective scientific power of their Earth-observing satellite data to document planet-wide changes in the environment and human society. And we made the wealth of our agencies’ collective information available at the touch of a finger, free and open to all.

In an unprecedented collaboration, the three space agencies created the joint COVID-19 Earth Observation Dashboard, which integrates multiple satellite data records with analytical tools to allow user-friendly tracking of changes in air and water quality, climate change, economic activity, and agriculture.

This tri-agency data resource gives the public and policymakers a unique tool to probe the short-term and long-term impacts of pandemic-related restrictions implemented around the world. The dashboard will continue to grow with new observations added over the coming months as the global economy gradually reopens.

And now at AGU, we three agencies have signed a declaration to continue this valuable global resource through June of next year. Below, I’ve pasted the text of our shared declaration, read at and AGU at the panel ‘Science in the time of COVID-19,’ but I want to leave you with the words of my friend, Dr. Michael Freilich, about why we do things such as the COVID-19 Earth observation dashboard.

Mike said, “Earth system science is bigger than any particular agency. It’s bigger than any single nation. It’s bigger than any single continent. And I surely hope, because humanity requires it, that we make some significant progress in understanding it.”

With that strong message from an inspirational leader, here’s the declaration:

Joint Declaration at the American Geophysical Union, December 2020, by NASA, ESA and JAXA

Today NASA, ESA, and JAXA commit to continue through June 2021 to advance their joint work in understanding the environmental changes in air quality, greenhouse gases, water quality, agriculture, and economic activity due to COVID-19, an effort that began in April 2020 with the establishment of a tri-agency Earth observation dashboard. This decision continues the unprecedented collaboration, and open sharing of data, modern indicator analysis, open source analytical tools and scientific knowledge and expertise involving our agency experts to integrate agency datasets to observe, analyze, and communicate COVID-19 related environmental changes to the public and to policymakers around the world. Over the next 6 months, the agencies will continue to jointly advance our understanding of the effects of COVID-19 on the Earth from the unique perspective of space while making the data openly available through the joint dashboard.

Over the next six months, additional data will be collected to further enhance the indicators and to allow the study of more regions and hot spot areas impacted by COVID-19. Socioeconomic and other field experts will be invited to collaborate and accelerate the analysis and understanding of the impacts enabled by the open dashboard datasets.

In addition, NASA, ESA, and JAXA will welcome other space agencies and organizations sharing similar values to join this initiative and contribute with their data and expertise to further expand this international Earth observation dashboard.

Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator Science Mission Directorate at NASA

Josef Aschbacher, Director, Earth Observation Programmes at ESA

Koji Terada, Vice President and Director General, Space Technology Directorate I at JAXA

Family Traditions

As we have gone to virtual meetings, we get to look into the lives of our collaborators and friends in ways we never see under normal circumstances. And as we start December and holiday season, we also remember our traditions that are defining, in part, where we are from and who we are. Let me share a glimpse into one of my traditions and specifically what I did all Sunday.

Besides Holy Evening and Christmas on December 24th and 25th respectively, and St. Nicklaus Day on December 6th, there was ONE holiday tradition that meant everything to me as a kid – the day we made Christmas Cookies.

Many of you know that my father was a preacher and leader of a religious evangelical community, but few know that he was a professional baker before that time. He had gone through an apprenticeship and learned how to make bread, assemble cakes, bake cookies and much more.

So that day in early December each year was a family highlight: we would all come together as a family and contribute as best we could as my father was stepping back to his first career as a baker. When we were little kids, all we could do is cut stars or hearts out of the cookie dough or eat some left-overs and later we got to do more. But my father set the speed and accuracy in a logistically challenging activity of baking 5-10 types and batches of cookies with one oven in sufficient quantities to last for the entire holiday season.

I have lived in the United States for almost 25 years and I have never baked any of the Swiss cookies until this year. I honestly cannot explain why not – too busy, too lazy? I always loved them and they fill me with the inner warmth of memories of a great family holiday tradition.

So, when our daughter Maria returned from her exchange year to Switzerland, she brought with her the same love for these cookies. And now, there was no escape.

On Sunday morning around 9 am, and after the necessary coffee, we made a plan to bake 7 different batches of cookies. We got help during a phone call to my older sister in Switzerland – the keeper of our family traditions – who gave us some “how-to”s and tricks and we were off to the races!

I totally loved the 5-6 hrs of family-time and the satisfaction of making something with nearly instantaneous and beautiful results! (In the pictures you’ll see Zimtsterne, Mailänderli, Vanille and Choco Sablés, and Spitzbuebe.)

And I loved remembering the childhood memories and even some tricks my father showed me. I specifically remembered his soft hand guiding mine as a kid and me observing him in the kitchen and how he handled steps in the process.

And I profoundly missed my father and my mother who have left this world within the last few years. In moments like this, it feels like we chatted only last week and we said good bye with a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek just a month ago! And the sorrow is right back in my life and a big awareness of the hole that will never be filled again. We will always love them and miss them.

With that, I wish all of you, our NASA colleagues and collaborators nothing but the best for this months and for the year to come. I hope you have already ordered our amazing 2021 calendar – another SMD tradition – and if not, you can do so, here: in English and in Spanish.

An Exciting Day for Science and Exploration

Today marks an exciting and historic event as precious samples from asteroid Ryugu have been brought to Earth by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Hayabusa2 mission. This is an extremely challenging endeavor and we commend and congratulate Japan on being not only the first nation that has been able to carry out a successful asteroid retrieval mission, but to now have done so for the second time!

We are excited about our collaboration between JAXA’s Hayabusa2 mission and NASA’s asteroid sample return mission – OSIRIS-REx, which extracted a sample from near-Earth asteroid Bennu on Oct. 20. Our mutually beneficial partnership with Japan allows us to share samples from NASA’s mission at Bennu and receive a portion of JAXA’s sample from Ryugu. Together, we will gain a better understanding of the origins of our solar system, and the source of water and organic molecules that could have seeded life on Earth.

Our model of sharing samples is a testament to the unprecedented partnership For the U.S. and Japan have built over half a century in aeronautics research and human and robotic space exploration. Together, our two spacecraft have traveled millions of miles to touch the ancient solar system. With Hayabusa2’s return today, and OSIRIS-REx’s return in less than three years, we will be able to share the science and insights we gain from these invaluable samples with all of humanity.

The fact that humans can launch a spacecraft from Earth, have it rendezvous so accurately with a small target and delicately touch the surface to collect a sample is just incredible and shows the tenacity of the human spirit. Missions like Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx give us hope. They inspire us to persevere through the many challenges faced with such challenging endeavors, and they teach us the power of working together – not as one nation or as one agency, but together as humans who share a home on this pale blue dot.

And what’s most exciting is that this is just the beginning. The return of Hayabusa-2 is the start of a decade of trailblazing missions to explore the Moon together, as part of Artemis, and to return samples from distant bodies, including JAXA’s upcoming Martian Moons eXploration mission and NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission. Our collaboration with Japan will provide invaluable science and critical knowledge for expanding humanity’s presence deeper into the solar system.

Congratulations again to JAXA and its partners, the French National Centre for Space Studies (CNES), the German Aerospace Center (DLR), and the Government of Australia including the Australian Space Agency), and to the Japanese people. This is a great day for science and exploration.