Dr. Erika Podest's childhood in Panama was filled with camping and finding wonder in Earth's biodiversity. Now, she is an Earth scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory .

"Since I was very little, I knew that I wanted to have a career where I used the latest technology to study nature," said Podest. "It turns out there's a whole field doing that. It's called remote sensing. So that's the observation of our planet from space."

Podest says understanding our planet is the most critical issue of our time.

"Our planet is under constant change. So, understanding what's the current reference -- how it was, how it is now and how it's projected to be in the future -- is super important. We live on this planet. We need to monitor our water. We need understand agriculture, our forests, the

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