Changing Earth | National Geographic

I served as an astronaut as long as just
about anybody ever has more than two
decades we recognized how important it
was to have a great bulging window to
look at the world where you could get
down and experience the
three-dimensional nature of where you
were and the textures and the colors in
the world that’s coming at your world
that’s receding behind you on my first
flight in 95 the Aral Sea just beside
Kazakhstan was still mostly full of
water by the time I flew in 2012 2013 it
was gone
one of the changes I noticed between
2000 to 2012 is a magnitude of city
lights at night you can see significant
changes in in the number of light bulbs
that we as human beings are spreading
out or the surface of earth particularly
in underdeveloped countries their
nighttime skies are getting illuminated
by light bulbs just like they are in the
countries that are industrialized
over the years I did see changes between
my first flight and my most recent one
so other areas that had built up in
population and we’re starting to get
polluted think it’s important that we
have that vantage point of humans in
space to look at it from above