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I believe it was about eight years ago,
when with, the encouragement of Dr.

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Ghassem Asrar was NASA's Associate
Administrator for the Earth science

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Enterprise at that time.

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We started to look at new technologies

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and new capabilities

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and new capability platforms

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for future Airborne Science missions.

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The Global Hawk quickly emerged

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as the platform to watch.

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And as it proved its capabilities

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and its reliability over the years,

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we started to get serious

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about trying to acquire the aircraft

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for Airborne Science applications.

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What you see here today is a result of that quest,

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the first Global Hawk Airborne Science
platform.

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The Global Hawk aircraft represents a real paradigm shift

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for Airborne Science and NASA.

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Large payloads,

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very long duration,

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high-altitude and extensive range capabilities.

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All packaged in the highly-reliable, fully-autonomous,

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unmanned aerial vehicle system.

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I believe it has the potential to enable great things.

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Unprecedented Earth Science observations

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to help better understand and characterize.

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global climate and environmental changes