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Goddard has really played a lead role in the world

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in moving lidar from airborne
and ground-based missions into space.

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I mean, the future is in the hands
of the creative people,

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here and elsewhere, in industry,
that can just take this

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and run with it.

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[music]

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We've revolutionized how 
we look at our own world,

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and the future is wide open.

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Winds, aerosols, trace gases.

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I've been spending a lot of time
and most of the past decade

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working on a lidar
to measure atmospheric CO2.

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We've been flying that fairly
regularly on aircraft.

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We've got this remarkable dataset

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that really proves, I think, our approach really works well.

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There's many other gases that are very important, you know,

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particularly with global warming, that lasers can help us monitor.

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Over all these years, we've

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developed these different techniques and

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lasers and detectors and put all

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those together into a

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recent system that we've 
just started working on:

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the Hazard Detection Lidar.

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Essentially a really precise,

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really fast lidar that helps 
land safely on a planet.

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You want to make millions of 
measurements in a second.

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You have to process
and produce those data in real time.

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This technique is giving us
better understanding of where we live,

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where we want to live, where we want to
explore, in ways that are fundamental.

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So I look at it as: it's a measurement engineering success

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story, and masterpieces of engineering
often lead to masterpieces of science.

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With MOLA-2 being on 
MGS being the most--

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--the ones I look back on most, ok, as being
absolutely--it really shook me up as well.

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And I think they shook up
the community as well.

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What you could do with a laser altimeter.

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And I'm amazed,

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I'm amazed at how much 
knowledge can be gleaned

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from this simple, relatively 
simple measurement.

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Just measuring, you know, time of flight.

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So you cannot just built just one lidar.

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You need a sustained team
who's been building lidar

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for some time so you can pass on the
lessons learned and so forth.

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To see that rocket go up

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with the thing that we had worked on
for so long

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finally become a reality.

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I had my family with me.

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Many of the other scientists
had their family.

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The reason many of us 
also bring our family there is

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because of the sacrifices our families
had to make to make this a reality

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because of the long nights and being away
and the amount of effort

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we had to put in.

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There's a lot of special pieces
that that need to go into it

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and a lot of experience
that is built through decades of doing.

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Across Goddard, they bring in new people to learn

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through mentorship and learn 
by doing on these projects.

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What I love about NASA, and in particular
Goddard is still this way,

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but it is really a meritocracy, meaning

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it didn't matter
 what school you went to,

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what--actually what degree
you had at some level, right?

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That just got you in the door.

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But how you progressed through
NASA is really based on what you did.

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I never suffered 
from being--I

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never was not promoted
or I never was was told

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I was doing a bad job or
anything like that because I was a woman.

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I think Goddard has been a fantastic place to work.

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When you get to 
work on something

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new and exciting

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that is privileged.

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It's a privilege.

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Getting good people to work with you,

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knowing what risks to take.

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Those are key factors
in success of all these things.

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It's working with the scientists.

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You're in the same team,

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you're in the same room,

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you're in the same meetings.

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You're down the hall from each other.

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You're in the same organizations.

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Our successes of the past

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are due to some very simple things.

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That is that Goddard

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is as a center,

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a people

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with an incredible dedication

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and devotion