When you hear that it's time to study wanderers, do you grab your telescope
or your microscope?
Here at NASA, the answer could be both.
The names of two things we study -- planets and plankton --
come from the same Greek root word planetes, which means wanderer.
They're both named for their tendency to move,
although at vastly different scales.
We can watch other planets in our solar system move across our night
sky because they orbit the Sun at different speeds than Earth.
Plankton, on the other hand, are tiny ocean organisms
that move through the water to feed or photosynthesize.
Plankton are responsible for the largest migration on Earth,
sinking deeper into the ocean at night
and then rising back closer to the surface where there's more sunlight by day.
At NASA, we have whole missions dedicated to studying other planets
in our solar system and even those around other stars.
We're also gearing up to launch PACE, a satellite
that will study plankton to better monitor the health of our ocean and our planet.