uh every crew
gets to design their own patch uh in
this next uh scene here you'll see our
patch which has the entire globe as well
as the sun on it symbolizing the global
nature of looking at atmospheric
research
and the effect the sun has on the
chemistry of our atmosphere
we had the opportunity to launch midday
on november 3rd which made it a very
comfortable wake up for half of our crew
waking up at 7 00 in the morning however
because we were a dual shift flight and
conducted operations around the clock
the other three members of the crew had
sleep shifted themselves to wake up
at 10 o'clock the previous evening so
they'd been awake about 12 hours
be or actually 14 hours before we
launched
we checked the integrity of our suits
and then we walk out
of the onc building at the cape to get
on the astrovan for the seven mile drive
out to the pad
we had a beautiful morning for the
launch the skies were crystal clear not
a
cloud in sight at t minus six seconds
the
shuttle main engine start sequence began
and moments later we're on our way
to 66th mission of the space shuttle
program and the 13th mission of space
shuttle atlantis
we were already over 100 miles an hour
as we cleared the tower and we began our
roll maneuver to the attitude required
for our
57 degree high inclination orbit
our trajectory actually took us up the
eastern seaboard of the united states
just off the coast at this time the
orbit liftoff the orbiter weighed around
4 million pounds and our thrust is
around seven million pounds so the
thrust to weight was
pretty nice and we were getting out of
town in quite a hurry as you can see
the orbiter was burning about three
thousand pounds of fuel per second and
as that weight decreased
the acceleration increased up to about
three g's or three times
earth's gravity at two minutes into the
flight we had expended all the energy
out of the solid rocket boosters so they
were jettisoned
to be picked up by the recovery ships
waiting about 50 miles off the kennedy
coast it's hard to imagine we sit on the
pad and then
just a few moments later later we're at
orbital speed just under 18 000 miles an
hour and we did all that in eight
minutes and 42 seconds
so you can imagine the ride and the
acceleration was quite unbelievable
at main engine cutoff we went from three
g's to almost zero g
uh instantaneously it was quite a
spectacular sensation
my first job was to film the external
tank which was flying in close
formation with us for post-flight
analysis before it re-entered the
earth's atmosphere
and one of the first things we do when
we get to orbit is open the payload bay
doors and we do that
for thermal reasons but it's also a
pretty exciting event for the crew
because it gives us our first
real view of the earth from space the
first day was very busy with activation
of all the payloads including the
crystal spa
you see kurt and joe in the fourth
flight deck controlling the digital
autopilot and also
keeping the big picture of all on all
the systems
while on the aft flight deck ellen is
flying the
robot arm to grapple the crystal spa
with a special electrical connector
to activate the batteries you see the
arm closing to the payload
you can see the target which is a very
important visual cue for the arm
operator to center
the end effector and the snares around
the grapple fixture
then comes time for the deploy and
starting with the unbirth of the payload
very smoothly to prevent any uh
saturation of the gyros on board the
crystal spa
and then maneuver from the low hover to
the release attitude
you can see the mass antenna moving
scanning the atmosphere
this is quite a long maneuver from the
low hover to read his attitude
crystal spa is a composition of the
platform spa and the instrument christa
and marcy
krista stands for cryogenic infrared
spectrometers and telescope for the
atmosphere
and with the three telescopes on board
and
very high speed sensors it collects a
very high space resolution data of the
middle atmosphere
and when we get ready on the opposite
side as well as on crystal for release
i check the trigger to open the snares
in order to start the release and you
can see now the end effector
backing away from the payload
very nice view of the earth from the
background and
when the arm stops at a few feet from
the payload
down from the aft flight deck will fire
the
first separation maneuver
and once the deploy is complete the
ground team and the crew on board is
very happy with the successful
deployment
here's a view of the payload bay showing
the atmospheric and solar science
instruments
the main structure that you see is the
space lab pallet with these six
atlas instruments on board as well as a
lot of the support equipment
this is a close-up of some of the solar
instruments and you see the door opening
on solcon which measures the
amount of energy coming from the sun and
this is another view of the payload bay
taken from the camera that's on the
elbow joint of the robotic arm
here's a view of ssbuv an ozone
measuring instrument as the door opens
and it begins to measure the back
scattered
ultraviolet light from the earth which
will allow it to measure
ozone this is the escape payload a solar
physics experiment sponsored by the
university of colorado
and it took advantage of four solar
viewing periods throughout the flight
this is the assembly of one of the
biggest secondary period in the mid deck
heat pipe performance experiment
dedicated to testing the heat pipes
extensively used on both
automatic satellites to cool electronics
elen is
currently running a spin test where
pipes are
spinning to see how centrifugal force
prevents the heat pipe to work properly
and we could set the
power as well as the spin rate we had
also pgac to help collecting data
this is the protein crystal growth
experiment we had two on board
and we've been told that uh we had uh
the highest yield of some of the highest
quality protein crystals they've ever
seen since uh
protein crystal growth experiments have
flown on shuttle
and the crystals will ultimately be used
to determine
their three-dimensional structure and
ultimately lead to
better pharmaceutical development and
this is a
close-up of one of the chambers showing
some beautiful
very large protein crystals
three gold boxes that you'll see in the
frame here on the locker doors where the
accelerometers for the shuttle
acceleration monument system
sams and we used that equipment to
document the micro gravity environment
on the orbiter
this is a piece of equipment called
albert that jean francois and i used
to position ourselves when we were
operating the robotic arm for the deploy
and the retrieve
our galley was the focal point of life
on orbit
we hydrate some of our food with hot or
cold water as indicated on the package
then we cut the package open and eat the
food with a spoon
even after all those years of being told
not to play with your food when eating
in space it's almost too much fun to
resist
jeans francois invented a new dish
shrimp cocktail on a tortilla
i think building the trim fajita was
half the fun
of course eating it was pretty good too
we had plenty of cameras on board to
document not only our in-cabin
activities but also the extensive earth
obs potential we had on our 57 degree
inclination flight
we took over 6 000 frames of film on our
11 day mission
and it's a it's a great opportunity to
see the world without boundaries
and also to get a better feel for
meteorology
oceanography and geology this is a
tremendous view
of plate tectonics in action this is the
indian plate
meeting asia arising in the himalaya
range and in the foreground
you can see the ganges river here
several of its tributaries and alluvial
fans
that feed into the ganges and the
foothills to the himalaya range
this is literally the roof of the world
there are several eight 000 meter peaks
in this field of view here including
mount everest and
annapurna uh just a gorgeous uh
sight that the blue shift had a chance
to see on several passes
uh up at the top of the the field here
is bowtie lake
one of the landmarks that we use to
identify mount everest as we go by
and now in the field is the tibetan
highland
it's a very arid land with a mean
altitude of 14 000 feet above sea level
this is a beautiful scene of the great
barrier reef off the northeast coast of
australia
you can see the coral formations the
different color
water indicating different depths
several plankton blooms and the ocean
currents in the sun clint to the right
we had the opportunity to see several
major storms while we were on orbit
this one was hurricane florence that
occurred early in our flight
we had to had the opportunity to pass by
and zoom in on the eye of the hurricane
you can see a very well defined wall
we had the opportunity to exercise
almost every day on orbit and here you
can see
jean francois enjoying the exercise the
music and the view
it was pretty spectacular to do that
this is a view of the inner limb
resistance device an exercise
device that i developed when i was out
at ames with one of my
colleagues there and it allows us to
exercise all of our anti-gravity muscles
while we're in space with minimal impact
to the orbiter
in addition it allows us to preserve
some of our neuromuscular coordination
when we return
back home we can also reconfigure for
upper body exercises
during our half day off we had a chance
to play with zero gravity
and perhaps my drill instructor from
officer school would be impressed with
this maneuver
another big challenge during our little
free time on orbit was
with scott and i trying to rendezvous
two big bubbles of water together and uh
we managed to do that also it's very
difficult to handle this uh
soft uh big bubble in the mid deck
and even when you want to take a cd you
know it flies away like a frisbee
this is me being attacked by the morning
mail messages from mission control one
day
are frequently asked how we sleep in
space and though on different shifts
here the three rookies
are demonstrating the use of our sleep
stations
we had a peculiar phenomena occur during
one of our supply water dumps we dump
water overboard that's either not
needed for cooling or consumption by the
crew you can see in the upper left
corner here is the supply water dump
nozzle with a stream of water coming out
what's building here is an icicle that
formed on the
outside of the cargo bay door which is
off the picture to the right
and the icicle formed and would have
continued formation probably right up to
the dump nozzle had we not stopped the
dump at about this time now watch the
plug here
this is a look at the entire uh icicle
after it had formed about six feet long
off the payload door and that part of
that ice remained all the way through
the entry until post landing it was
still on the vehicle
here we have the flight deck crew don
myself and joe preparing to do a
procedure called flight control checkout
where we crank up one of the auxiliary
power units for hydraulics and we move
all the flight controls and check all
the implementation and displays out for
our trip home make sure atlantis is
ready to come home
standard procedure we do every
and after uh eight days of free flight
it was time to join back up with spas to
bring it home
it is a beautiful sight here against the
deep black of space
kurt uh monitored the rendezvous and
performed the final burns from the left
seat
while i manage the various sensors used
to display our approach on a portal
portable computer
don flew the final stages from the app
station taking inputs from us
and the computer program but ultimately
using the best sensors we had on board
his very own eyes
we worked our way in until we had we
could see every detail the surface of
the crystal spas
finally for the grapple sean francois
operated the handheld laser
and gave don and curt very accurate
range and range rate measurements that
allowed us to make our rendezvous time
almost down to the second
here's a little closer view of crystal
spas as don is flying the final part of
the approach
and i'm getting ready to use the robotic
arm to do the capture
and this is a view of the arm as it's
coming in over the grapple pin
and then i initiate the capture sequence
which pulls the payload
onto the arm and rigidizes it
here's a view after we've captured it
and before we've bursted in the payload
bay looking out the overhead windows
and the rendezvous was accomplished on
flight day 10 on
flight day 11 we went into our final
solar viewing attitude the last
opportunity for the solar instruments to
take measurements
and then flight day 12 was our day to
come home and this is us preparing to
come home
and one of the last things we do is
close the payload bay door
once we have the payload bay doors
closed it's time to reconfigure atlantis
for the
trip home we get back in our orange
pumpkin suits and
we prepare for the the burn we use our
engines to slow the orbiter back down to
re-enter the atmosphere
it's time to turn some of that kinetic
energy we gain during launch back into
heat
and joe's pointing out the windows so
jean-francois takes a look and you can
see the plasma
behind us as we stream through the
atmosphere
converting that energy back into heat
out my right window here you can see the
glow around the water also as we're
penetrating the atmosphere don's
managing managing the energy
make sure we have good energy state and
here's a long-range camera from edwards
picking up our
yaw jet thrusters still firing to
maintain attitude
this is a look at kurt's right window
there as we make about a 90-degree turn
to final at edwards
as we roll out on final we had one
final test to perform before we landed
it was a subsonic aero test to
roll the vehicle left and right and to
yaw the vehicle left and right to look
at control power in those control
surfaces
to see if there's a potential for more
crosswind capability in the vehicle
once that was complete we rolled
ourselves back out on final approach
we fly the approach now at about 300
knots equivalent airspeed
at 2000 feet or so we begin to
decrease our glide angle from 20 degrees
to just over 1 degree
at 300 feet kurt extended the gear for
us
and as we continually decelerate we
crossed the threshold of the runway at
about 225 knots
17 feet in the air and targeting a
touchdown speed of 195 knots
we touched down about 3 200 feet down
the runway
and immediately after touchdown we
deployed drag chute we had the first
reusable drag shoot of the space shuttle
program
the drag chute helps us decelerate as
well as lowers the slap down rates on
the nose gear
the deceleration we get out of the drag
chute reduces the amount of runway we
use by about 1500 to 2000 feet
at about 60 knots we release the drag
chute so we don't have to contend with
that hardware post wheel stop
and by this time we had
flown about 175 revolutions of the earth
and we'd been in space almost 11 days
and flown four and a half
million miles and we badly needed a
shower and a comb-cooked meal
no shuttle presentation would be
complete without
a shot of our launch it's a very
exciting beginning to the mission and
this is a view from the base of pad 39
bravo
basically sea level and just a few
seconds after the order has lifted off
again we had a beautiful day that day
crystal clear blue skies i don't think
i've ever seen it any bluer
and it was quite an accent a few days
later however we had another chance to
look at pad 39 bravo from a different
perspective from about 165 miles
directly overhead
and you probably recognize uh most of
the things here in the slide we have
this pad right here is 39 bravo where we
left off
did our lift off and you can see the
southern pad and also the crawler track
where we maneuver the orbiter from the
vertical assembly building and the
orbital processing facility here
out to the pads the shuttle landing
facility is right in here as we see
and if you take a bigger view you can
see down here the skid strip
at cape canaveral complex
and also the beginning of our space
program the very historic pads we have
here for the mercury
and the gemini program along with some
of our expendable pads that we use to
launch
the expendable payloads or expendable
rockets i should say
into orbit cape canaveral seaport is
down here
and if you come on find cocoa beach down
to patrick air force base is here on up
through
cocoa and we have titusville airport and
titusville up in here so it's quite a
view again very clear for florida
and this is where we're supposed to land
november 14th obviously
tropical storm gordon had had other
plans so we we wound up in
edwards here's another view of our
payload bay and i wanted to point out uh
some of the instruments that we were
carrying on board
we had three atmospheric instruments two
of them on the atlas pallet
one of them here atmos and then you can
see the moz antenna over here
then up here on the starboard sill the
ssbuv instrument
all three of those instruments measure
ozone and one of the
exciting results was to compare the
ozone measurements between all three
instruments which we were able to do in
some of the northern hemisphere
measurements atmos and ssbuv were also
of course focusing on the antarctic
ozone hole
which was present during our flight and
was just beginning to recover
and they were measuring the ozone within
the hole at about half the level of the
ozone outside the
antarctic ozone hole atmos also measures
about three dozen
other trace molecules in the atmosphere
to get a much more complete picture of
how the ozone depletion process occurs
it measures chlorine which is the
primary catalyst for ozone depletion
and a lot of the reactive nitrogen
species which can bind with chlorine and
prevent it from depleting ozone
and we were able to get to what the
concentrations of those chemicals were
as a function of altitude both within
the hole and outside the hole and they
also found that chlorine exists in
different reservoir species at different
altitudes which was a new and
interesting result for the scientists
they also measure atmos also measured in
the mid-latitudes
uh one of the freons freon 22 at a value
that had doubled
over the measurement that it took in
1985
and we really still don't know the
significance of what that might be
some of the solar science instruments
there's three solar science
instruments in the center of the palette
acr sulcon and soul spec
and there's one on the far side of the
pallet that's hidden from view called
susim
two of those measure the total amount of
energy coming from the sun
they were very pleased with their
results they were able to get
measurements with a precision of less
than
0.05 percent the other two
measure the solar spectrum as a function
of wavelength
and along with ssbuv uh three of the
measure
three of them uh independently measured
the ultraviolet solar spectrum
which is a difficult measurement to make
because ultraviolet light
affects the optics of the instruments so
they were very pleased at that result
and the final instrument on board is way
in the back and you can just barely see
the door
open behind the atmos that's the escape
instrument
and it's a solar physics experiment
looking at the sun in the extreme
ultraviolet
uh wavelength region this is our other
primary payload you've seen in some of
the other shots that christa spa
satellite and krista is the main
instrument that you see here the big
white cylinder
and it's cooled by cryogenic helium
which is what takes up a lot of that
space there
christa's primary objective is to
understand more about whether in the
stratosphere or the middle atmosphere
of course we're all familiar with
weather in the troposphere which is what
we experience
every day but there are a lot of
phenomena that are very similar in the
middle atmosphere winds
turbulence large temperature changes and
not very much is known about that
and by measuring different chemicals
that can act as tracers
they hope to understand quite a bit more
about that as they go through their data
they're also producing the first global
map of atomic oxygen
in our atmosphere which scientists think
helped cool the earth
the other primary instrument marcy is
sitting right here under these
insulating blankets and it was measuring
hydroxyl and nitric oxide which are two
important chemicals
in the ozone depletion process we had
as i mentioned opportunity to see three
different storms one of them was
a super cyclone zelda that was out in
the pacific
we also saw a tropical storm gordon
develop
off the coast of the yucatan which
eventually became a hurricane and
caused some pretty heavy rains in
florida and severe damage
gordon was also one of the reasons
obviously that we did not land at the
kennedy space center because it was
affecting the peninsula at that time
this is again hurricane florence which
developed
southeast of bermuda it eventually moved
north and became
extra tropical and never reached
landfall as a hurricane but the moisture
from this storm
combined with a storm over europe and
caused some fairly severe flooding over
france and spain
this is the indonesia or part of the
indonesia chain
looking from the north to the south the
large island here of
java is present as well as the
islands of bali here and lombok
on bali and lombok there were some
fairly severe eruptions of volcanoes
in the summer of 1993. there are two
volcanoes on java that are venting steam
right now
one of them is arjuna which is near the
center of the screen
and it's difficult to see the venting
that's occurring also over on the right
side of the screen which is difficult to
see here
is marapai marapai
three weeks after this photograph was
taken had a major eruption which caused
some fairly deadly
mudslides to occur on the island of java
this is the ganges river delta the
largest delta in the world
this photograph is centered on the
country of bangladesh
and what you can see here at the base
is massive amounts of silt and clay
sediment
originating from the ganges and
brahmaputra rivers uh
far upstream it's a an ecological
area of key importance because all this
is mangrove habitat it's a
area where many aquatic and landforms
live
notably in the remaining forested
mangroves
here at the bottom of the view
the asian tiger resides
unfortunately other pressures have
caused a
significant amount of deforestation and
movement towards uh converting mangroves
into
rice paddies and so the shuttle
photography
helps scientists document the rate of
environmental change
as well as geologic change including
delta growth because of all the
sediments coming from
the rivers upstream this is a
gorgeous shot of the highest mountain in
the world this is the summit
of mount everest it stands at 8848
meters
or for those of you who aren't metric
it's uh 29 000 feet and
change it is an area of
special significance for me because had
i not been selected as an astronaut two
years ago
i would have been on a climbing
expedition and probably
or hopefully would have been standing on
the summit as my
sts-66 compatriots flew overhead
this is a tremendous synoptic view a low
oblique
of the region that we've just been
talking about
off in the distance here you can see the
beginnings of the ganges river delta
you can see the foothills of the
himalaya
the roof of the world and the tibetan
plateau
in this view you can see bow tie lake
which we pointed out in our movie
you can also see the everest region and
the annapurna region
you can see several tributaries and
alluvial fans feeding the ganges river
and this uh this view really
demonstrates the rain shadow effect
and what i mean by that is uh warm uh
moist air
emanating from the indian ocean meets
the himalaya and as that air rises
it drops all of its moisture in the form
of precipitation and so we have
green lowlands and very snowy high peaks
but very arid territory over here
one of the more nice places where the
new places take photos from orbit is the
middle east because it's always clear
hardly ever a cloud in in the sky and
what we're looking at here is the uh
sinai peninsula pretty much in the
center of the frame with egypt and
africa to to the top
and the land form here that we see
we take photos from orbit for many
different reasons a lot of them are
taken just due to
the sheer beauty however we do take a
lot to
to study the earth geology is a major
issue
meteorology how humans are affecting the
climate and how they're using the land
so give example this slide
has a lot of those issues in it the dead
sea fault right here
with the dead sea sitting here is the
lowest place in the world
uh over 300 meters below sea level
everything flows in there pretty much
nothing flows out obviously
at that sea level uh it represents the
geology that we look for
is to we from space we can see the big
picture of how
different plates of the planet are
moving around and tearing apart
and we've been studying that in a lot of
different areas of the world
vegetation and how we use the land the
little vegetation streak you see right
here separates egypt to the
south from the gaza strip and also
if you look right in this area is the
river now delta
where is highly cultivated and the
ribbon of the now which is very historic
both in religion and history
as it flows or comes from southern
africa there
again we can study these areas using uh
color
visual photos like this one or color
infrared which you'll see here in a few
moments
and we can understand how the
inhabitants are using that land whether
they're over using it or under using it
how the irrigation and water system is
working
also meteorology from this slide if you
look down in the left part here you can
see
basically streaks caused by high winds
and sand dunes and
different materials moving around
another example
of this is western africa over in here
we wind up seeing a lot of sand
and material blowing off the western
deserts of africa
in the same systems that bring us the
hurricanes
across the atlantic to central america
and to the
united states area we have documented
results that show
material maybe off your car in the
mornings of sand and dust that has
really come from
the african continent and has just been
carried into upper level winds
halfway around the world another photo
here showing
the effects of humans on the environment
this is the okavango
river delta in uh northern botswana
which is in the southern tip of africa
uh it's an inland delta it's kind of
unique in that the river flows into this
delta usually we think of deltas being
into the ocean
like new orleans but this is an inland
delta
heavy rains and wetlands in northern
or in angola flow down the river and
enter the delta at this point
and due to a bunch of faults and risks
again geology wise
causes the river to dam up and perform
and
form this inland delta the size of the
delta is kind of unbelievable from here
to the tip of it down here where it
enters the kalahari desert
is about 90 95 miles long
and it takes over six months from the
water to move from this area to maybe
the tip of the delta
during that time it's absorbed used by
the plant life
or evaporated and some of the
civilizations around here are trying to
pump water out of this area
to mining operations to cities again
which will destroy
this um area which is very similar to
the south american
rainforest it is one of the more wilder
regions of the
african continent huge herds of buffalo
elephant
and zebras and other animals roam there
quite often we photograph this area
almost every shuttle flight if we can to
help document the changes in this delta
because it's kind of a miniature uh
model of how other areas of the world
are working
a lot of times in these areas up here we
see forest or
see fires where people are burning off
the uh the wetlands so they can use the
um
the area for grazing since cattle
herding and
cattle is the biggest industry for the
local population
and over the past hundred years we've uh
we've documented the changes in this
river delta how
a different weather phenomenon and how
humans are affecting it
and it's slowly shrinking and going away
this is an oblique view of lake charles
lake chad
is located at the border of chad nigeria
niger and
cameroon it's also a very good subject
for photography on each shuttle flights
as
it is a very shallow lake less than 25
feet deep
and that's why the size varies
seasonally very much
the picture shows the water on the
southern basin the picture is looking uh
south we have the water on the south
basin and
you can see also very big dunes
covering the eastern and the northern
edges of the lake
where water used to stand before
and also can be seen the prevailing
wind direction very easily with the
agricultural
burning blowing to the west
this uh near vertical falls color
infrared picture
shows a very unique agricultural pattern
south of khartoum between the white and
the blue nile rivers
of course it's in like that's why
everything green looks red on the
picture
uh hundreds of rectangular
fields can be seen over a
size of about 100 miles and also
straight lines
that are the water filled canals
irrigating this
region this is a by very far the biggest
irrigation project in north africa
in a periodic cycle throughout the year
half of the
fields are in crops essentially of
cotton and the other half
is fallow for resting soil and also for
pest control
this is also an oblique view of the
strait of gibraltar looking
south east mediterranean sea is on the
upper left corner and you have the
atlantic ocean on the right
this is africa on the top and spain on
the left
the sunglint highlights very much the
high
currents through the strait and also
current shears along those straight
lines
starting from coast of spain also we can
see
very easily surface waters patterns
thanks to the
the glint and also some very small
shipwrecks the sunglint highlights also
the town of tange here in
morocco africa and also
the bay of callis in spain and also
you can see very long contrails on the
bottom of the picture
this is a nice public view looking north
east of the whole alps
mountains chain which is a natural
border
of binding the some of the main european
space agency countries participating in
the international space station program
france on the left italy on the right
germany on the upper right corner
and switzerland in the middle can be
seen
very easily the pattern of the rhone
valley
with the famous curve the inverted l
shape
and the 90 degrees angle here leading to
the geneva lake
and also it's very easy to see those
big valleys here on the italian side as
they have been
shaped as a you letter by a glaciers
during the last
ice age this is the austral valley and
this is a valley leading to terrain
and here you see the izair and mauryan
where a lot of very famous
french and italian skiing resorts are
located
this is a view of greenland and because
of the time of day that we launched
we had sunrises usually in the very
southern part of our orbit and then we
had sunlit
as we ascended in our orbit and had
sunsets
at the top of our orbit so this is kind
of a late afternoon shot
and of course it's easy to pick out all
the fjords along the coastlines
which were created during the last great
ice age about ten thousand years ago
it's interesting to find out that the
ice particularly in the center of
greenland is about ten thousand feet
thick
that there are still rivers of ice that
are flowing towards the oceans
where the ice then either melts or form
forms icebergs
this is a view of volcanic terrain in
the central andes in south america
and i like this view because it's very
exotic looking and if you didn't know
you were looking at the earth you might
think we were exploring another planet
the geologists are interested in
pictures like this not only because of
the
many different types of volcanic
landforms that they can pick out in the
picture
but also because there are a lot of dry
lake beds and they can
pick out ancient shorelines and some of
the alluvial fans
and they can also chart to changing
water levels in some of the lakes and
there's a very small
turquoise lake if you can see it up here
in the upper right
this near vertical photograph of
deforestation in brazil was one of our
earth obs targets that we were asked to
study and shows
two distinctly different agricultural
land use patterns in terms of their
maturity
the larger rectangular shapes on the
bottom of the
of the view represent
an older and more fully developed
agricultural environment while the
smaller
less developed areas are more recent
agricultural development this scene is
fairly typical of the landscape in
southwestern brazil by the way
photographs such as these are
are excellent tools to illustrate the
areas of change that are occurring
in some more remote areas of our world
they provide the scientists with insight
into the rate at which these
tropical rain forests and the transition
zones of the tropical rainforest
are being altered and in some cases as
shown here in a very dramatic way
this is a uh a photograph that
shows the southern part of the luthera
island in the northern bahamas
looks like a nice place to visit as a
matter of fact if you look again in
about 20 years you may see me on a
sailboat down there someplace
uh the hook-shaped island encloses a
relatively shallow platform
as evidenced by the lighter blue color
which is surrounded by the dark blue
much deeper water the feathery pattern
in the center here
is a uh platform of sandbars and
sand channels created by the tidal
currents that are moving in and out
uh and off of the platform the channels
serve as a funnel
to move large amounts of of the
limestone
off of the platform and down into the
deeper water
this of course is uh is a fantastic view
of of the grand canyon
created by the colorado river that that
starts
in rocky mountain national park in
colorado and then
works its way down into into lake powell
right here
created by the glen canyon dam there and
then cuts the
grand canyon 227 miles
long in total most of it that you can
see in this view
and uh averages about 10 miles wide and
a mile deep
now if you've ever visited the grand
canyon you probably
stood at the village on the rim right
there and marvel at how magnificent the
site was
looked across to the to the north rim
that is in the kaibab plateau that is
covered by
snow here and it's just equally a
marvelous sight from space the malospina
glacier in in southern
alaska is a classic example of a of a
piedmont
glacier line along the foot of a
mountain and then flowing into the sea
the principal source of ice for this
glacier is provided by the
seward ice field that is up in the
northern area here and then the ice
flows in
to the glacier through these three three
channels
the glacier moves and surges
and that moves the earlier formed
moraines outward
and in expanding uh concentric circles
and
creates these patterns that you see here
as it moves into the ocean
going to the other end of the globe from
north to south we're down here near
antarctica this is heard island which is
down near uh
antarctica and the the special part of
this picture is the
wind patterns that you can see in the
clouds here as the
wind flows past the island it creates
these vortices called von carmen
vortices
as the vortices develop you can see how
the cloud patterns develop and dissipate
causing these opposing vortices in the
wind pattern so not only do we see the
wind patterns but i also see the cloud
formations develop there as well
we were very fortunate to have several
crystal clear passes over japan
and this is the southern end of the
island of kyushu in japan
and up near the top of the frame you can
see the volcanic
volcano sakurajima with a little bit of
steam plume
emanating from the top you can also see
quite a bit of ash collection near the
summit
and also what's striking on every pass
over japan
is the population density i think you
can appreciate
in this view several areas of
population density several large cities
including just to the west of sakurajima
a town called kagoshima and it's
interesting that
the school children there have grown so
accustomed to
volcanic activity that they often wear
hard hats to school
this is our last picture in our series
of slides this
clearly is a mission that was dedicated
to looking at the health of our planet
and if there's anything
that the entire population the planet's
interested in it's the health of our
home