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From 70,000ft above

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the desert,
everything looks barren and brown.

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We have an instrument attached to
the bottom of the plane collecting data.

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And when the data is processed,
it looks like a colorful painting

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revealing what is hidden in plain sight.

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We're now looking in the Western
United States for critical minerals.

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Critical minerals are a category
of minerals that are essential for U.S.

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national security, industry
and for the economy of the future.

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Some of the examples where there use

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are in our cell phones,
in our computers, in our planes.

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NASA and the USGS have teamed up
to find deposits of these minerals

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for a mission called the Geological Earth
Mapping Experiment, known as GEMx.

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Lithium. Aluminum. Cobalt.

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Neodymium.

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These are a few of the 50 critical
minerals deemed essential to the U.S.

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national security,

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technology industries, the energy sector,
and our economy as a whole.

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Every mineral reflects light

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slightly differently,
so they have a unique spectral signature.

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Now, what NASA has invented is
a technology called imaging spectroscopy,

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where we collect an image, we collect
hundreds of wavelengths of light

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that go beyond the wavelengths
our eyes can see.

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so we can actually understand
the chemistry of what we're observing.

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The minerals that contain rare
earths have a unique spectral signature.

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The minerals contain
lithium, have unique spectral signature.

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Our eye can't discriminate these
when we see them on the ground

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necessarily, but with a spectral
fingerprint from an imaging spectrometer,

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we can map these directly
around the Western

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United States and with EMIT on the space
station around the world

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that allow us to identify
and find those critical mineral deposits.

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In 2022, NASA launched

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the most advanced imaging spectrometer
to fly on the International Space Station,

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specifically to map minerals in arid
land regions, including critical minerals

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around the world and in our nation.

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We invented it
initially as we went to the moon and Mars,

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because that was a good way to understand

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what the minerals
that make up the moon and Mars.

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But now we're bringing it back to Earth,
and we can look in the desert Southwest

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with this.

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NASA invented technology
called imaging spectroscopy.

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The advantage of an aircraft is
we can be closer to the ground,

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so we can see higher concentrations
of the minerals that we're trying to map.

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And then we have the spaceborne version
to take us around the planet as we look

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for these critical minerals.

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It's exciting to be able

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to use this technology to map minerals
that can be of value to our nation

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in so many ways to our economy,
the national security,

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and pursue our science objectives,
and that's incredibly fulfilling

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to make these measurements
that's benefiting our nation.