1
00:00:01,935 --> 00:00:04,537
Decades in the making and launched
mere months ago,

2
00:00:04,537 --> 00:00:08,508
the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud and ocean
Ecosystem, or PACE, is giving us

3
00:00:08,508 --> 00:00:12,012
a first glimpse at promising new data
from the sea and sky.

4
00:00:12,345 --> 00:00:16,216
It's a mission that's exciting
because PACE makes the invisible visible.

5
00:00:16,816 --> 00:00:19,085
It's flying hundreds of miles above Earth,

6
00:00:19,085 --> 00:00:22,889
and yet it's designed to see microscopic
things.

7
00:00:23,056 --> 00:00:26,059
PACE is seeing the ocean
like no other mission has before.

8
00:00:26,393 --> 00:00:27,227
While previous

9
00:00:27,227 --> 00:00:31,097
ocean color satellites could only detect
a handful of wavelengths, PACE

10
00:00:31,097 --> 00:00:36,102
is detecting more than 200 wavelengths,
and more wavelengths mean more pigments.

11
00:00:36,336 --> 00:00:40,874
Tiny organisms called phytoplankton
contain green pigments that allow them to

12
00:00:40,874 --> 00:00:44,344
photosynthesize, which is really important
if you care about breathing and eating.

13
00:00:44,978 --> 00:00:47,380
But their pigments make them many,

14
00:00:47,380 --> 00:00:51,184
many shades of green,
and that contains a ton of information.

15
00:00:51,551 --> 00:00:55,655
The more information revealed by PACE’s
hyperspectral Ocean Color Instrument,

16
00:00:55,655 --> 00:00:59,626
the more details that emerge from our
changing ocean and coastal communities.

17
00:00:59,893 --> 00:01:03,263
Like how one group of phytoplankton
can dominate a particular area.

18
00:01:03,496 --> 00:01:05,365
You can see kind of that in chlorophyll,

19
00:01:05,365 --> 00:01:08,068
and you see that
in chlorophyll, that pigment.

20
00:01:08,068 --> 00:01:12,472
But once it starts popping up from,
you know, this view that PACE allows

21
00:01:12,472 --> 00:01:16,009
with all these different phytoplankton,
once again, you see so many different

22
00:01:16,009 --> 00:01:20,780
miniature, teeny, tiny features that are
maybe not that important physically,

23
00:01:20,780 --> 00:01:25,251
but they're important enough
to make one type of phytoplankton win.

24
00:01:25,251 --> 00:01:28,254
One type of phytoplankton
be dominant versus the other.

25
00:01:28,388 --> 00:01:31,558
And you care about this
because not every community is the same.

26
00:01:31,724 --> 00:01:32,692
Some are beneficial.

27
00:01:32,692 --> 00:01:35,028
They provide food and oxygen.

28
00:01:35,028 --> 00:01:36,229
Others close beaches.

29
00:01:36,229 --> 00:01:39,966
So we really want to know where they are
and when they appear and the impact

30
00:01:39,966 --> 00:01:40,967
of all of this.

31
00:01:41,901 --> 00:01:42,735
PACE is also

32
00:01:42,735 --> 00:01:46,906
giving us an early look into aerosols,
microscopic atmospheric particles

33
00:01:46,906 --> 00:01:50,343
like dust,
sea salt, pollen and volcanic ash.

34
00:01:50,710 --> 00:01:53,179
The two polarimeter instruments on board
measure

35
00:01:53,179 --> 00:01:56,182
the light bouncing off the particles
at many different angles.

36
00:01:56,483 --> 00:01:58,785
You know,
this scene represents observations

37
00:01:58,785 --> 00:02:01,788
at a number of different geometries
as the spacecraft flies over.

38
00:02:02,021 --> 00:02:05,859
So it's about 5 minutes of time elapses
between the first observation at one angle

39
00:02:06,192 --> 00:02:09,796
and the last observation
looking in the backwards direction.

40
00:02:09,996 --> 00:02:11,331
Moving through the different angles

41
00:02:11,331 --> 00:02:14,400
reveals the Sun glint
reflecting off the ocean surface.

42
00:02:14,601 --> 00:02:18,171
Analyzing the geometry of that Sun glint
gives us more details

43
00:02:18,171 --> 00:02:19,772
about that environment.

44
00:02:19,772 --> 00:02:23,643
If you want to observe the ocean itself,
inside the ocean body,

45
00:02:23,676 --> 00:02:26,713
you can't do it when you see the Sun glint
reflecting off like that.

46
00:02:26,746 --> 00:02:31,084
So having lots of different viewing
angles allows you to see geometries

47
00:02:31,084 --> 00:02:33,586
where you can see what's happening
in the body of the ocean as well.

48
00:02:33,586 --> 00:02:35,622
Tha's only the surface.

49
00:02:35,622 --> 00:02:36,956
We really want to understand why.

50
00:02:36,956 --> 00:02:39,959
Where’d the color come from, and
what is really inside in the atmosphere

51
00:02:40,293 --> 00:02:42,562
and what is inside that water? Right.

52
00:02:42,562 --> 00:02:45,498
There is a
there's a deep meaning of those stuff.

53
00:02:45,498 --> 00:02:49,569
And so in order to really understand that,
we need more information,

54
00:02:49,769 --> 00:02:54,307
I cannot cannot wait to be on the far
end of launch with data

55
00:02:54,307 --> 00:02:57,777
flowing and data quality
looking great, just absorbing

56
00:02:57,777 --> 00:02:59,646
what the community comes out with,
because I think

57
00:02:59,646 --> 00:03:03,550
we're all going to be really surprised
and and really, really pleased.