Speaker 1: From Bloomberg News and iHeartRadio. It's the big Take. I'm
Speaker 1: Westkasova today. To see the past, the present, in the future,
Speaker 1: just look up today. We're talking about two significant advances
Speaker 1: in science and technology that may not sound related, but
Speaker 1: they are. The first is probably familiar. It's the James
Speaker 1: Webb Space Telescope that's been beaming back these incredibly detailed
Speaker 1: images from galaxies far far away. The other may be
Speaker 1: less familiar. It's NASA's SWAT mission. That's a satellite that
Speaker 1: uses something called remote sensing to take detailed measurements of
Speaker 1: the planet surface, water, and ocean topography. So SWAT together,
Speaker 1: these two things represent a leap in our ability to
Speaker 1: access space together vast amounts of data about the status
Speaker 1: of our planet right now, and to look back in
Speaker 1: time and into the future. That's useful not just for
Speaker 1: pure science and discovery, but to make decisions about our
Speaker 1: everyday lives. Let's jump right in with the James Webb
Speaker 1: Space Telescope, and to do that I have the help
Speaker 1: of my colleague Lauren Grush, who's on the space beat
Speaker 1: for Bloomberg. Lauren, I want to start by asking you
Speaker 1: about the James Web Space telescope. I think we've all
Speaker 1: been looking at those amazing pictures coming back. It launched
Speaker 1: into December twenty one. Why is this thing such a
Speaker 1: big deal, Well, you have to understand how astronomy works, right,
Speaker 1: we're essentially trying to map out our neighborhood without ever
Speaker 1: leaving our house. What a telescope like JWC does is
Speaker 1: it gives us an even bigger I guess, magnifying glass,
Speaker 1: if you will, so look even deeper and farther into
Speaker 1: space than we can before. So it's not only is
Speaker 1: it located you know, roughly one million miles from Earth
Speaker 1: that's you know, extremely far, but also it has the
Speaker 1: biggest mirror that we've sent into space that can collect
Speaker 1: even more light than we've ever collected before. So that
Speaker 1: is our best tool for being able to see into
Speaker 1: the deepest recesses of the universe. That and learning more about,
Speaker 1: you know, what the earliest galaxies look like, that formed
Speaker 1: right after the Big Bang. I've heard it described as
Speaker 1: you're not really looking at distance, you're looking at time
Speaker 1: because you're like looking so far back in time, anything
Speaker 1: you're seeing could be potentially billions of years old, right,
Speaker 1: because you know, light does take time to travel to
Speaker 1: our eyes, and so when you're gathering light from such
Speaker 1: deep distances, that light has spanned, you know, billions of
Speaker 1: light years to reach jw'st's mirrors, and so what you're
Speaker 1: really seeing when you look at those images is how
Speaker 1: those galaxies looked billions of years ago. What was it like,
Speaker 1: as someone who covers space to wash that thing launch?
Speaker 1: Was that like a big moment for just you Well,
Speaker 1: I like to say that the James Web Space Telescope
Speaker 1: has kind of two chapters and my reporting history. You know,
Speaker 1: people don't think about it now because it's in space
Speaker 1: and it's working as it's supposed to. But most of
Speaker 1: JWST's lifetime was marked by cost overruns and development delays.
Speaker 1: You know, we had all these promises that it was
Speaker 1: going to launch, you know, many years ago, and then
Speaker 1: you know, we would constantly get new updates. Oh, it's
Speaker 1: going to take more time, it's going to take more testing,
Speaker 1: and so you know, it was always kind of a
Speaker 1: long running joke, you know, was it ever actually going
Speaker 1: to launch and would we actually be able to afford
Speaker 1: it before Congress pulled the plug? And then also there
Speaker 1: was just kind of a general terror not just among
Speaker 1: reporters but also among the astronomy community because of how
Speaker 1: JWST to launch. Producer Katherine Fink sat down with senior
Speaker 1: project scientist doctor John Mather at his home in Maryland.
Speaker 1: Here's what he told her about developing the James Webb
Speaker 1: Space Telescope. The biggest challenges were that it's huge. It's
Speaker 1: bigger than the rocket, and so it has to be
Speaker 1: folded up to fit inside the rocket. And it also
Speaker 1: has to be cold so that it doesn't emit its
Speaker 1: own infrared light, and that means it's got to be
Speaker 1: protected by a gigantic umbrella, which we call a sunshade
Speaker 1: that's as big as a tennis court that also has
Speaker 1: to be unfolded in outer space. And because it's so
Speaker 1: far away from Earth, we can't go fix it if
Speaker 1: anything's wrong. So some major challenges here which require serious engineering.
Speaker 1: It was harder than we thought it would be, and
Speaker 1: we ran into budget trouble because well, we just didn't
Speaker 1: know how hard it was going to be. So unfortunately,
Speaker 1: our funding agencies, the Congress International partners, they all said, well,
Speaker 1: that's true, it's harder than we thought, but this is
Speaker 1: the only way to get this, so we better keep
Speaker 1: on going. And so we finally finished it and launched
Speaker 1: it on Christmas morning twenty one, and it was a
Speaker 1: perfect launch. We were all kind of umpins and needles
Speaker 1: for a good solid month after launched. But now we're
Speaker 1: in this new chapter, which is, you know, the discovery phase.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think most people don't even remember
Speaker 1: the first phase, the first chapter, because we're getting back
Speaker 1: such stunning imagery and amazing science from the telescope, which
Speaker 1: is what the astronomers and scientists and engineers worked so
Speaker 1: hard to achieve to begin with. So it's definitely all
Speaker 1: been worth it, and it has been nice to see
Speaker 1: the narrative change into discovery now. And this was part
Speaker 1: of an international partnership. Who else is involved in the project?
Speaker 1: Europe was also involved. They provided the launch vehicle for this,
Speaker 1: the Area in five, which launch JWST in a space
Speaker 1: and it actually did such a good job with its
Speaker 1: launch that it put it on a great trajectory so
Speaker 1: that JWC will actually last longer than they even anticipated.
Speaker 1: And so it really was a global project. I mean,
Speaker 1: scientists around the world are are all vying for time
Speaker 1: on this telescope. So it wasn't just NASA. You know,
Speaker 1: NASA was the one that provided the bulk of the money.
Speaker 1: North Grumman was the primary contractor, and then various scientists
Speaker 1: and astronomers from around the world are also involved. Catherine
Speaker 1: asked doctor Mather what questions he was most eager to
Speaker 1: answer about our galaxy. The nature of the cosmic dark
Speaker 1: matter in the cosmic dark energy are very puzzling. Astronomers
Speaker 1: physicists did not expect them. There was some evidence from
Speaker 1: a long time ago that they might be real, but
Speaker 1: we didn't expect them. We don't understand why they're there,
Speaker 1: and so we're all hunting for more evidence about that.
Speaker 1: Will we ever understand, maybe not, what happened to grow
Speaker 1: the first galaxies. You know, every big galaxy has a
Speaker 1: black hole in the middle, a big one. They're called supermassive,
Speaker 1: so they're like a million or a billion times the
Speaker 1: mass of the Sun. We don't know whether the galaxy
Speaker 1: made the black hole or the black hole made the
Speaker 1: galaxies which came first. We would certainly like to know
Speaker 1: are there planets anything like Earth out there? So we
Speaker 1: know that there are planets of the right size and
Speaker 1: temperature to be like Earth. The next big step after
Speaker 1: the telescopes that were already building, is something called the
Speaker 1: Habitable World's Observatory, and it would be about the size
Speaker 1: of the web, only much more accurate and capable of
Speaker 1: making such a good image that you could see a
Speaker 1: little Earth next to the star that it orbits as
Speaker 1: a separate image, and then we can say, well, does
Speaker 1: it have water and oxygen and carbon dioxide and things
Speaker 1: like that. That would be a hint that it's alive.
Speaker 1: So here on Earth, of course, the oxygen comes from
Speaker 1: plants and algae, so if we find it out there,
Speaker 1: then we'll have a long discussion about what it means.
Speaker 1: But it's a hint that another little planet could be alive.
Speaker 1: I think that's what's so exciting about JWST is that
Speaker 1: it really is designed to tell us things that we
Speaker 1: can't even give it prompts for, and to you know,
Speaker 1: look even deeper than we could even think possible. I mean,
Speaker 1: one of the most amazing parts of it was when
Speaker 1: it first launched. You know, scientists were getting data back
Speaker 1: so quickly and analyzing it so fast that they were
Speaker 1: constantly breaking the record for finding, you know, the most
Speaker 1: distant galaxy that's ever been found, and you know, they
Speaker 1: would find it one day, and then like a week
Speaker 1: later they would find another more distant one. So the
Speaker 1: rate at which we are learning new things from this
Speaker 1: telescope is so rapid and fast, and so I think
Speaker 1: it's only a matter of time before it's telling us
Speaker 1: something that we didn't even anticipate to look for. When
Speaker 1: we come back a scientist who will use the web
Speaker 1: lescope to peer into black holes to hear more about
Speaker 1: the kind of data that's come in from the web
Speaker 1: telescope so far. Catherine checked in with doctor Priamvida not
Speaker 1: to rage. She's an astrophysicist who studies black holes. Her
Speaker 1: team has been awarded time with the telescope later this year,
Speaker 1: and already all these new discoveries from other scientists using
Speaker 1: the instrument have kept her pretty busy. You, of course
Speaker 1: studied black holes. Could you just give a brief description
Speaker 1: for those like myself who just have a hard time
Speaker 1: wrapping her heads around what a black hole is. One
Speaker 1: way to think about a black hole is that it
Speaker 1: is a place where gravity is so intense that almost
Speaker 1: anything that comes close get captured by the intense gravity.
Speaker 1: They are such strongly aggregated the dense clumps of matter
Speaker 1: that the end states of stars. So when stars burn
Speaker 1: out all their fuel, they explore and they can leave
Speaker 1: behind if they started life as a pretty massive star,
Speaker 1: very compact objects. So for example, for if the Earth
Speaker 1: were to behave like a black hole and have the
Speaker 1: intense gravity that a black hole has, we'd have to
Speaker 1: scrunch the entire Earth to the size of a penny.
Speaker 1: That's when that compact wow, and that's when it's gravity
Speaker 1: would have the intensity of that of a black hole.
Speaker 1: So what is a typical day like as someone who
Speaker 1: researches black holes? Is there a typical day? There is
Speaker 1: no typical day, And in particular with James web right now,
Speaker 1: I'm looking for any new findings about distant black holes
Speaker 1: where James Webb has imaged some fantastic nearby black holes.
Speaker 1: Two galaxies that harbor black holes in their inner regions
Speaker 1: are very, very dusty, so you know, James Webb has
Speaker 1: been able to cut through right into the heart of
Speaker 1: this galaxy, look at the dust and given us a
Speaker 1: really clearer view than we've ever had before. And so
Speaker 1: we can actually see the impact of the black hole
Speaker 1: in the region around, so matter falls into the black
Speaker 1: hole and some portion of the rest mass energy of
Speaker 1: the matter that is swirling in gets converted into radiation,
Speaker 1: so that heats up in the vicinity of the black hole.
Speaker 1: So these were all sort of you know, theoretically, we
Speaker 1: had worked this all out, and James Webb JWST is
Speaker 1: actually revealing all the sort of ionized hot gas that
Speaker 1: we expected. But now we're actually seeing it really up close,
Speaker 1: so it's pretty amazing. Yeah, So you mentioned the distant
Speaker 1: black holes. What would those tell us if we're able
Speaker 1: to get data from the telescope versus the ones you
Speaker 1: just talked about, Well, the distant black holes, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously the question is of the origin, right where did
Speaker 1: the first black holes come from? James web has the
Speaker 1: capacity to look back into the infant universe and actually
Speaker 1: revealed the presence and catch the first black holes in action.
Speaker 1: So we don't quite know how the first black holes
Speaker 1: grow whether, you know, we think that the end states
Speaker 1: of stars could produce the first lot of black holes seeds,
Speaker 1: but there are also other physical mechanisms, So people like
Speaker 1: me and many other researchers have proposed like direct formation
Speaker 1: bypassing the formation of a star and just forming a
Speaker 1: black hole just from the gas just you know, in
Speaker 1: the early universe is so violent that you can actually
Speaker 1: condense a lot of gas very rapidly and make a
Speaker 1: seed black hole that is much more massive, much bigger
Speaker 1: than the ones you could get from the end states
Speaker 1: of stars. So I think what the first black holes
Speaker 1: really are, how they grow, because we believe that the
Speaker 1: black hole at the center of our own galaxy, right,
Speaker 1: the Milky Way has a black hole at its center
Speaker 1: that is four million times the mess of the Sun.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like wanting to see the picture of
Speaker 1: an infant when we see the picture of the fully
Speaker 1: grown adult or the aging person, right, So we want
Speaker 1: all the intermediate snapshots to build that sort of life
Speaker 1: history of how a black hole would form and grow.
Speaker 1: But meanwhile, what is super exciting is that James Webb
Speaker 1: has revealed the presence of early galaxies, many more galaxies
Speaker 1: in the early universe than we expected, and out much
Speaker 1: earlier in the universe. So it's like the clock of
Speaker 1: when things start, you know, all the action starts in
Speaker 1: the universe, as it were with stars forming, And seems
Speaker 1: like suggestions are that probably the clock is starting a
Speaker 1: lot earlier than our current theories led us to believe.
Speaker 1: So that's that would be super exciting, that would be radical.
Speaker 1: You know, James Webb is also forming our view of
Speaker 1: the nearby universe. So for example, you know, they're the
Speaker 1: first observation of an outsized exoplanet system and its atmosphere,
Speaker 1: and that is just like awesome. We've never been able
Speaker 1: to do that, right, So number this just opens the
Speaker 1: door for studies of the composition of these atmospheres, and
Speaker 1: you know, it leads us to ponder some of the
Speaker 1: really big questions, right, are there any atmospheres that are
Speaker 1: similar enough to ours or have the kind of composition
Speaker 1: that could support some kind of life, etc. Etc. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of opening the window even in the very
Speaker 1: nearby universe. So it's sort of radical observations, Lauren, coming
Speaker 1: back now from black holes in the depths of space
Speaker 1: to something a little closer to home. NASA is at
Speaker 1: work on any number of missions. What is NASA doing
Speaker 1: right now that excites you. NASA is trying to go
Speaker 1: back to the Moon after all of this time, and
Speaker 1: this time they're trying to do it a little differently.
Speaker 1: So a few years ago, they officially named their Artemis
Speaker 1: program for the effort, and Artemis is a great name
Speaker 1: for it because she's the twin goddess of Apollo in
Speaker 1: Greek mythology, and the purpose of Artemis is actually to
Speaker 1: send the first woman and the first person of color
Speaker 1: to the Moon. So that will be great, you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of its own historical significance, But it also
Speaker 1: differs from Apollo and that NASA really is trying to
Speaker 1: go back to the Moon this time to stay. So
Speaker 1: rather than just sending you a couple of astronauts to
Speaker 1: the Moon at a time to collect samples and leave footprints,
Speaker 1: you know, that's their motto. It's no longer flags and footprints.
Speaker 1: They're looking to go sustainably, so creating infrastructure in and
Speaker 1: around the Moon that will allow humans to live and
Speaker 1: work their long term so that we have a sustainable
Speaker 1: presence of there. It's an extremely ambitious endeavor, but I
Speaker 1: think what you know, I think it's what we are
Speaker 1: ultimately working towards when it comes to our space exploration goals.
Speaker 1: It's how do we improve upon the major achievements that
Speaker 1: we've done in the past, And so that's what I'm
Speaker 1: really excited to see. And what I'm also excited about
Speaker 1: is this program seems to have some staying power, more
Speaker 1: so than other ambitious programs have had in the past.
Speaker 1: You know, this isn't the first time that we've tried
Speaker 1: to go back to the Moon again or even go
Speaker 1: on to Mars. But when it comes to administration changes,
Speaker 1: you know, things, things can get wiped away. But this
Speaker 1: one survived an administration change, so hopefully it will survive another.
Speaker 1: And it would be great because that's how we make,
Speaker 1: you know, impressive things in space happen. They take a while,
Speaker 1: more longer than four years of presidency. So I'm very
Speaker 1: excited about that, and I'll be following it as long
Speaker 1: as I am reporting on space. We'll return to Earth
Speaker 1: when we come back. Lauren, we've talked about the Moon
Speaker 1: and deep space. Now let's come back home and talk
Speaker 1: about NASA's new project called SWAT that stands for Surface
Speaker 1: Water and Ocean Topography, and it uses this thing called
Speaker 1: remote sensing to survey the Earth. Can you tell us
Speaker 1: what remote sensing is? Sure? So, remote sensing is the
Speaker 1: technology that we use from space to observe our Earth.
Speaker 1: So that can be an optical wavelengths that can be
Speaker 1: with radar, that can be with an infrared. It's using
Speaker 1: satellites to collect data about our Earth. So looking back
Speaker 1: at us the ultimate selfie, if you will. Why is
Speaker 1: it important to do this from high above the Earth?
Speaker 1: What do we get looking down that we don't get
Speaker 1: from all the different ways we're able to measure stuff
Speaker 1: from Earth? Well, I mean it gives us a more
Speaker 1: complete picture of the overall globe. So, for instance, remote
Speaker 1: sensing has been great for collecting data about our climate
Speaker 1: and observing it over time. So if we want to
Speaker 1: focus on one patch of the Earth and see how
Speaker 1: the climate in that area is changing, you know, that's
Speaker 1: a great use of remote sensing and space technology. Another
Speaker 1: obvious reason is, you know, if we want to look
Speaker 1: over a distant part of the Earth that is not
Speaker 1: very accessible, we're getting much more fidelity with the data
Speaker 1: that we can collect. And also the commercial space industry
Speaker 1: has taken a big foothold in remote sensing. Normally, this
Speaker 1: was an area solely taken by the government and you know,
Speaker 1: the public sector, But now private companies are actually building
Speaker 1: technologies thanks to the proliferation of satellite technology, the miniaturization
Speaker 1: of satellites. You know, the commercialization of satellites. They are
Speaker 1: the ones that are actually taking the lead and the
Speaker 1: reins on remote sensing as we move forward. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: talk about that for justice. Second, who's sending these satellites
Speaker 1: up there? You know, NASA has been sending remote sensing
Speaker 1: satellites into orbit for ages now, but we have commercial
Speaker 1: companies like Leo Labs, for instance, and Planet and Spire.
Speaker 1: They're all launching small satellites that can look back on
Speaker 1: the Earth and collect data about it as well. I
Speaker 1: think the government has understood the benefits of turning those
Speaker 1: satellites back on Earth and looking and being able to
Speaker 1: collect data about the world that we live in. One
Speaker 1: of those satellites is called SWAT. NASA loves its acronyms.
Speaker 1: Producer Rebecca Chassan talked to a couple experts to learn
Speaker 1: a bit more about what sets this particular remote sensing
Speaker 1: satellite apart. So my name's Tamlin Pavelski. I'm a professor
Speaker 1: at the University of North Carolina, and I'm also the
Speaker 1: hydrology science lead for the Surface Water and Ocean Topography Mission.
Speaker 1: My name is parag Vase. I am the SWAT project
Speaker 1: manager for NASA's Jepro Welshian Laboratory in Pasadena, California. SWAT
Speaker 1: stands for Surface Water and Ocean Topography. It's NASA's next
Speaker 1: generation satellite mission that is expected to look at all
Speaker 1: of the global surface waters. That means all we might
Speaker 1: say freshwater and also our salt water. So let's divide
Speaker 1: earth surface water into kind of two chunks. Right. First,
Speaker 1: we've got the ocean. It's easy to think about the
Speaker 1: ocean as a bathtub right where there's like one sea level,
Speaker 1: but in fact, the ocean surface has topography, it has
Speaker 1: higher and lower places. We have a current suite of
Speaker 1: satellite altimeters they're called profiling or nat or altimeters that
Speaker 1: allows us to kind of see features in the ocean
Speaker 1: that are maybe a couple hundred kilometers in size. It
Speaker 1: turns out that most of the ocean energy, like most
Speaker 1: of the circulation in the ocean and the action in
Speaker 1: the ocean, it's actually smaller than that two hundred kilometer size.
Speaker 1: And so what is going to provide us that first
Speaker 1: picture of like an order of magnitude smaller if features
Speaker 1: like eddies and whorls and things like that that are
Speaker 1: down to maybe more like twenty kilometers rather than two hundred.
Speaker 1: One of the things that we know is that sea
Speaker 1: level it's rising everywhere, of course, or almost everywhere, but
Speaker 1: it's rising at different amountains in different places. But our
Speaker 1: current set of satellites don't give us very good data
Speaker 1: right near the coast. So what we're left with is
Speaker 1: we have to use tide gages, and we have some
Speaker 1: of them, but they're you know, they're not evenly spaced
Speaker 1: around the world's coasts, and there's big spaces, big gaps
Speaker 1: in between them. SWAT is actually going to be able
Speaker 1: to see pretty much right up to the coast, and
Speaker 1: so we're going to be able to use it to
Speaker 1: better understand sort of how sea level rise might affect
Speaker 1: coastal communities. If you are going to want to think
Speaker 1: about what matters to you, you know, when you're trying
Speaker 1: to predict a flood, right if you're a homeowner, you
Speaker 1: probably care where is the floodwater going to be and
Speaker 1: how high is it going to get? And SWAT observes
Speaker 1: both of those things simultaneously. So with the standard altimeters
Speaker 1: of the past, how close to the coast could you
Speaker 1: get with those measurements? Yeah, so we could get to
Speaker 1: something like seventy kilometers and how close we'll swap be
Speaker 1: able to get into the coast. So we think we're
Speaker 1: going to get to something like ten to fifteen kilometers,
Speaker 1: so still not right up to the coast, but pretty
Speaker 1: darn clothes, and at much higher resolutions. As I said,
Speaker 1: so you know, it's like saying pixels. Everybody knows about
Speaker 1: pixels and their monitors, right, So it's like saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: I saw a few pixels on my screen, but now
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I'm able to multiply the number
Speaker 1: of pixels I have by tenfold or one hundredfold. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to see a much better picture, much more
Speaker 1: clearly than what I saw before. And so the goal
Speaker 1: is to not only measure the height of the water,
Speaker 1: but also because we're taking these repeating measurements, it gives
Speaker 1: us a measurement of how that is changing. That is
Speaker 1: certainly something we can do very precisely with the measurement
Speaker 1: that I've mentioned to you. And what I mean very
Speaker 1: very precisely, I mean within a few centimeters, So sort
Speaker 1: of the distance you know, the size of a quarter,
Speaker 1: tell me about what kind of picture we have right
Speaker 1: now of Earth surface water. How much do we know
Speaker 1: right now? We kind of monitor a few lakes, like
Speaker 1: the really big ones mostly and then a smattering of
Speaker 1: smaller ones, but maybe ten twenty thousand something like that
Speaker 1: around the world. There's something like six million lakes larger
Speaker 1: than one hundred meters by one hundred meters in the world,
Speaker 1: and most of those we have no idea what's going
Speaker 1: on in terms of the amount of water that's being
Speaker 1: stored in them, and spat's really going to help us
Speaker 1: with that. Lakes are these sort of sentinels of the
Speaker 1: water cycle. If you want to understand what's going on
Speaker 1: in terms of the overall water cycle in that whole
Speaker 1: area that drains into that lake, look at how the
Speaker 1: water level in the lake is changing. It's kind of
Speaker 1: integrating and this data will it be publicly available? Who
Speaker 1: gets it absolutely. That's one of the cool things about
Speaker 1: NASA is they're almost kind of radically open. So as
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, the only people who get to
Speaker 1: see this data before it becomes completely free and open
Speaker 1: are a handful of people who are working on doing
Speaker 1: some of the first validation work. Right where we're saying, okay,
Speaker 1: is this like, is it basically Okay? Water is to
Speaker 1: me and what makes me personally excited is the closest
Speaker 1: we get to life. People talk about exploring Mars, what
Speaker 1: are they looking for water? So I think that is
Speaker 1: going to be something that having the best and most
Speaker 1: expensive information on our home planet is going to make
Speaker 1: a difference in people's everyday lives. So maybe not in
Speaker 1: my lifetime, but I'm convinced it will make a difference.
Speaker 1: So it's something that is not just an academic exercise.
Speaker 1: I think it's really going to impact and inform people's lives,
Speaker 1: and that's really what SWAT is all about. A lot
Speaker 1: of the impact of SWAT will be felt by coastal communities.
Speaker 1: Rebecca went out to find out what that looks like.
Speaker 1: My name is Barbara Launder, first and four Minister. I'm
Speaker 1: an associate professor of Natural Sciences at Flagwick College and
Speaker 1: the new job for me is a city commissioner with
Speaker 1: the City of Saint Augustine in Florida. We have a
Speaker 1: tidal gauge that is one of the National Water Level
Speaker 1: Observation Network gauges that's in Mayport Jacksonville area, and that's
Speaker 1: the one to the north of US and to the
Speaker 1: south of US. There's another one at Cape Canaveral. The
Speaker 1: distance between the two title gauges is one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty six miles as the growth flies, which is a
Speaker 1: pretty significant gap if you're looking at developing local models
Speaker 1: for resilience planning. So we're working with what would be
Speaker 1: limited data sets to begin with that we're extrapolating from,
Speaker 1: and then those extra relations are also affected by the
Speaker 1: fact that we sit pretty much smack in the middle
Speaker 1: of the two tidal gages, and so it seems to
Speaker 1: us that SWAT would really help to fill that gap.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me a little bit about what a
Speaker 1: resilience plan looks like and why these models would be
Speaker 1: important for it. We have a number of different plans.
Speaker 1: We have storm water plans, we have a resilience plan,
Speaker 1: we have coastal vulnerability assessments. All of these help us
Speaker 1: develop a picture of what our current state is and
Speaker 1: what we should be planning for. For example, our wastewater
Speaker 1: treatment plant is at sea level. Practically, it's it's just
Speaker 1: a few feet above sea level, and so how long
Speaker 1: will we be able to operate that plant? What can
Speaker 1: we do to protect it? From storm search and saltwater
Speaker 1: intrusion and accidental releases of wastewater. I'm curious you said
Speaker 1: that SWAT hadn't really crossed your radars, so to speak.
Speaker 1: What was your reaction when you saw what it would
Speaker 1: be doing? Frankly, I amsolutely excited about it, Lauren. As
Speaker 1: fast as this technology is advancing, where do you see
Speaker 1: this heading? If you look forward a few years or
Speaker 1: even more than that, what do you think we're looking at?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think we're looking at a future when
Speaker 1: maybe even an average citizen, if they want to find,
Speaker 1: you know, high fidelity imagery or data about a certain
Speaker 1: point on Earth, they'll be able to go and buy
Speaker 1: that data for their purposes because there are going to
Speaker 1: be so many companies that are selling this and making
Speaker 1: it more readily available as costs to launch come down,
Speaker 1: and as more people understand the value of having this data.
Speaker 1: So I think it's only going to get better and
Speaker 1: sharper and easier to accesus. Lauren Brush, thanks for coming
Speaker 1: on the show. Thanks so much. Thanks for listening to us.
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