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EXCERPTS FROM REMARKS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY:
ISY MISSION TO PLANET EARTH CONFERENCE; APRIL 29, 1988
DR. JAMES C. FLETCHER, NASA ADMINISTRATOR

  Thank you very much, John (McLucas), President Haaland, Professor Curien, Dr. Malone, distinguished guests and ladies and gentlemen.

  On behalf of NASA, it's a pleasure to welcome all of you to this most important conference. This is the first time that senior space agency officials from around the world are meeting to discuss how they might coordinate their activities during the International Space Year, or ISY, in 1992. As you know, the ISY will commemorate the 35th anniversary of the International Geophysical Year and the 500th anniversary of Columbus' voyage to the New World. Thus, it unites the universal themes of exploration, discovery and intellectual inquiry that have powered the human spirit in the past and continue to point to a future of unlimited horizons.

NASA is pleased that President Reagan directed the agency to lead and interagency effort to develop the ISY concept and international support for it. We view this conference as a major step forward in this effort, and are pleased that all of you could participate in the development of a major theme for ISY.

For thirty years, we humans have been opening new horizons in space and pushing back frontiers that limit our goals on this planet. As a spacefaring civilization, we have expanded our understanding of the solar system, the galaxies and the universe. In the process, we've seen new worlds as never before and, not surprisingly, have learned there's much more to know about our own world, planet Earth. So going into space has opened our eyes to what we know and don't know about Earth.

In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that space exploration has spawned a revolution in humanity's perception and understanding of Earth. The Apollo program provided people around the world with a new perspective of this planet as "Spaceship Earth," a gleaming blue and white ball floating in the blackness of space. This image dramatically reshaped mankind's view of itself, and triggered an awareness of Earth as a fragile and most precious life support system, one made even more precious because, based on what we know today, it is the only body in our solar system to harbor and nourish life.

The scientific impact of spaceflight has been equally dramatic. In less than half the span of a human lifetime, largely through the findings of space-borne sensors, mankind has transformed its view of Earth's land masses, its oceans, its atmosphere, and its solar environment. Spaceflight provides the basis for improvements in our daily lives on Earth and will continue to do so in the future.

Geostationary satellite cloud pictures and data are now the basis for daily explanations of the weather worldwide. Multispectral images of land areas from space have become commonplace and have furthered our understanding of natural processes and the impact of human activities on our planet. The use of space observations together with vast improvements in computer power has enabled scientists throughout the world to develop global scale models of the atmosphere and of long-range weather and climate changes. And projects are underway to extend this approach to the stratosphere, the oceans, and Earth's land masses. 

Witness the example of the Seasat 1 satellite NASA launched a decade ago. In its three-month lifetime, Seasat recorded more original information about Earth's ocean currents than had been accumulated during centuries of Earthbound navigation. By the same token, before the advent of spaceborne sensors, scientists barely had realized the global impact of isolated volcanic activity. We now have evidence that such activity causes substantial changes in climate patterns around the world over periods as long as several years.

Evidences of such interactions abound. Having seen and analyzed the Earth from space, we now know that it is a complex and dynamic world. As the sum of all its parts, it is also a fragile system in which disruptions at any point reverberate throughout the whole.
 
Many of these disruptions have been brought about by human activities. Thanks to our ability to observe the Earth from space and to the development of large-scale computer systems, we now know that economic and technological activities over the past few generations have contributed significantly to global change. Humankind is now a critical part of Earth's system. And it's clear we've still got a lot to learn about how to be a constructive part of that system.
  
Human activity has contributed, in large measure, to depletion of the ozone layer; to desertification of once-fertile lands; to deforestation in tropical and other forests; to acid rain and, perhaps, even to a "greenhouse effect", which some scientists believe is gradually warming the Earth's surface.

The good news, however, is that we are now in a position to understand the consequences of our actions; and, once understood, I trust, we'll be able to do something about them together. Every nation in the world will have a part to play in solving these problems, because global problems require global solutions carried out internationally. It is imperative that we join together to correlate and integrate measurements all over the globe. And this can involve every nation

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