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2/23/89
working draft

STATEMENT OF DR. LENNARD FISK BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMITTEE UNITED STATES SENATE

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:

[Figure D243.01]

I am pleased to have this opportunity to [[strikethrough]] tell [[/strikethrough]] speak with you today about NASA's plans for a Mission to Planet Earth. Mission to Planet Earth was one of the four original themes suggested in what we now affectionately call the "Sally Ride Report"; a report commissioned by former NASA Administrator James Beggs in 1986 to provide strategy options for future exploration and utilization of space by NASA. Since the publication of the "Ride Report", the concept of a Mission to Planet Earth has been [[strikethrough]] taken up [[/strikethrough]] adopted and studied further by NASA's Office of Space Science and Applications (OSSA). Mission to Planet Earth has matured from an intellectual concept into a very practical plan for the study of the Earth as a planet.

 At the same that we have been developing Mission to Planet Earth to study and understand [[strikethrough]] the [[/strikethrough]] our Earth from space, there has been a growing worldwide awareness throughout the public and government of changes in our global environment that threaten the quality of life on [[strikethrough]] the Earth [[/strikethrough]] this planet. As a result of this conjunction of events, Mission to Planet Earth has become the centerpiece of the U.S. Global Change program, to understand the Earth and the processes that maintain and change the global environmental balance. To understand how the Earth system works requires the global perspective that only space can provide. In exploring the other planets of our solar system, NASA learns to understand these planets first at the global scale, because the only perspective we have of these bodies is that from space. This is opposite to how we have traditionally learned about [[strikethrough]] the [[/strikethrough]] our own planet Earth, where our best understanding is at the local scale. The best perspective from which to obtain a global understanding of Earth is space also, and at NASA we have a great deal of experience in studying the Earth and other planets from space. 

[Figure D2453.002]

Transcription Notes:
I did not include crossed out words but included the edits which includes the added words written in. I added the original things that were crossed out, as I thought the original and edits might be valuable