构建地球科学的前瞻性：走进 Lindsey Jacobson

美国国家航天局（NASA）的地球观测卫星任务追踪着这颗不断变化的行星的数十种特征——气溶胶、海平面、土地覆盖、云量——跨越数年乃至数十年。为依赖这些数据的科学界和运营社区维持这一记录，需要的不仅仅是工程才能。它需要为不确定的未来进行规划：预判任务延迟或在轨事件可能在这些社区所依赖的数据中造成的缺口。

NASA’s Earth-observing satellite missions track dozens of features of a changing planet — aerosols, sea levels, land cover, cloud cover — over years and decades. Sustaining that record for the scientific and operational communities who depend on it requires more than engineering talent. It requires planning for an uncertain future: anticipating where a mission delay or on-orbit event might create a gap in the data those communities rely on.

Lindsey Jacobson 的工作帮助 NASA 在这些中断发生前进行预判，并为高级领导层提供管理这些中断的方案。

Lindsey Jacobson’s work helps NASA anticipate those disruptions before they happen and gives senior leaders options for managing them.

作为一名工程专业的 Pathways 实习生，Jacobson 通过位于弗吉尼亚州汉普顿的 NASA 兰利研究中心（NASA Langley Research Center）系统分析与概念局（SACD）内的 NASA 地球科学战略集成环境（NESSIE）团队，为 NASA 地球科学部提供支持。

A Pathways intern in engineering, Jacobson supports NASA’s Earth Science Division through the NASA Earth Science Strategic Integration Environment (NESSIE) team within the Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate (SACD) at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

NASA 的 Pathways 项目通过实习将本科生和研究生与 NASA 各中心联系起来，表现优异者可获得全职公务员职位。自 2022 年以来，Jacobson 每年夏天都会回到 NASA 兰利，在中心工作与完成她在北卡罗来纳州立大学的机械工程博士论文之间分配时间。

NASA’s Pathways program connects undergraduate and graduate students with NASA centers through internships that, with satisfactory performance, can lead to full-time civil service positions. Jacobson has returned to NASA Langley every summer since 2022, splitting her time between the center and finishing her mechanical engineering dissertation at North Carolina State University.

“我们开展地球科学研究的方式正在发生变化。”

“The way we do Earth science is changing.“

问题空间

The Problem Space

Jacobson 和 NESSIE 团队为地球科学卫星组合提供支持——数十项任务，每一项都测量着这颗行星的特定特征，从云层到海面表面温度，再到土地利用。其目标是为终端用户社区提供他们所依赖的数据产品。挑战在于未知。

Jacobson and the NESSIE team support the Earth science satellite portfolio — dozens of missions, each measuring specific features of the planet, from clouds to sea surface temperature to land use. The goal is providing end user communities with the data products they depend on. The challenge is the unknown.

“任务寿命、在轨可能发生的情况以及时间表都存在不确定性，”Jacobson 解释道。该团队的工作为 NASA 的高级领导层提供了一种应对这种不确定性的方法：了解覆盖范围可能出现的缺口，并确定缓解或对冲风险的方案。通过提供满足终端用户需求的替代路径，这项工作支持高级领导层管理一个复杂且相互依存的组合。

“There’s uncertainty about mission lifetimes and what could happen on orbit, and about schedules,” Jacobson explains. The team’s work gives NASA’s senior leadership a way to navigate that uncertainty: understanding where a gap in coverage might emerge and identifying options to mitigate or hedge against it. By providing alternative pathways for meeting end-user needs, this work supports senior leaders in managing a complex, interdependent portfolio.

编写代码

Writing the Code

在这一努力中，Jacobson 的重点是构建分析工具，赋予团队她所称的“前瞻能力”。

Within that effort, Jacobson’s focus is building analysis tools that give the team what she calls a “foresight ability.”

“这是一种预判可能发生的不同事情的能力——即地球观测任务组合中可能出现的变化——并制定应对策略，以便我们能够持续向终端用户提供数据，”她说。

“It’s the ability to anticipate different things that might happen — changes that might occur across the portfolio of Earth-observing missions — and to have strategies in mind for how to respond, so we can keep delivering data to end users,” she says.

并非所有的变化都是坏消息。任务有时会远超其计划寿命运行，从而创造了扩展其价值的空间。但无论调整是否受欢迎，原则都是一样的：在任何事情发生之前了解各种选择。

Not every change is bad news. Missions sometimes operate well beyond their planned lifespan, creating room to extend their value. But whether an adjustment is welcome or not, the principle is the same: know the options before anything happens.

Jacobson 将其比作飓风季节的准备工作。“你准备好防风窗板，买好沙袋，并将它们预先放置好，”她说。“然后当警报来临时，你不会手忙脚乱，也不会面临商店售罄的风险。你已经准备好了所需的一切。”NESSIE 的工作遵循同样的逻辑，通过提前了解中断可能意味着什么，并在任何事情发生之前准备好一套应对措施，来服务于地球观测组合。

Jacobson compares it to preparing for hurricane season. “You get the storm shutters, you buy the sandbags, and you have them pre-positioned,” she says. “Then when the warning comes, you’re not scrambling, and you’re not at risk of the store selling out. You already have what you need in place.” NESSIE’s work follows the same logic for the Earth-observing portfolio by understanding ahead of time what a disruption might mean and having a set of responses ready before anything happens.

“如果发生变化，我们会主动提出可以实施的策略和替代方案，”Jacobson 说。“我们提前这样做，以便人们了解可能存在哪些选择。”

“We proactively suggest the strategies and alternatives that could be enacted if there’s a change,” Jacobson says. “We do that ahead of time, so people understand what options might exist.”

她的方法带有她研究生研究的影子，该研究审视了复杂系统——如电网这种不能简单拆除重建的基础设施——必须如何刻意地演进。“我们设计了一个电网，现在我们永远与这个电网共存，”她说。“我们不能拆掉它再建一个新的。我们能做的是修改、扩展和改进我们现有的东西。”正是这种利用现有资源而非从零开始的本能，塑造了她在 NASA 的工作方式。

Her approach carries echoes of her graduate research, which examines how complex systems — infrastructure that can’t simply be torn down and rebuilt, like the electric grid — must evolve deliberately instead. “We designed a grid, and now we live with that grid forever,” she says. “We can’t tear it down and build a new one. What we can do is modify, expand, and improve upon what we have.” It’s the same instinct for working with what exists, rather than starting from scratch, that shapes how she approaches her work at NASA.

保持同步

Keeping Pace

第一次来到 NASA 的工程师可能认为工作中技术部分最难。Jacobson 发现了另一件事：环境本身才是最需要适应性的地方。

Engineers arriving at NASA for the first time might expect the hardest part of the job to be technical. Jacobson found something else: the landscape itself is what demands the most adaptability.

“我们开展地球科学研究的方式正在发生变化，”她说。商业公司正越来越多地与政府机构一起贡献数据。新的航天机构正在进入该领域。创新的技术和架构层出不穷。与这种转变保持同步——了解 NASA 自身的能力如何演进，以及如何最好地服务于依赖这些数据的社区——与任何计算工作一样，都是工作的一部分。

“The way we do Earth science is changing,” she says. Commercial companies are increasingly contributing data alongside government agencies. New space agencies are entering the field. Innovative technologies and architectures are emerging all the time. Keeping pace with that shift — understanding how NASA’s own capabilities are evolving and how to best serve the communities that depend on the data — is as much a part of the job as any calculation.

这种适应性也体现在一些较小的方面，比如人工智能工具在她团队工作流程中日益增长的作用。“兰利创造了许多第一，”Jacobson 说，呼应了她最近在一次实习生活动中从 NASA 兰利主任 Trina Dyal 那里听到的话。“我们希望继续保持领先。这意味着学习新事物，并弄清楚如何将它们融入我们的工作方式中。”

Some of that adaptability shows up in smaller ways too, like the growing role of AI tools in her team’s own workflow. “Langley has done a lot of firsts,” Jacobson says, echoing something she heard recently from Trina Dyal, NASA Langley’s director, at an intern event. “And we want to continue to be the first. That means learning new things and figuring out how to bring them into how we work.”

Jacobson 的科幻书架

On Jacobson's Sci-Fi Shelf

Kurt Vonnegut 的《土卫六的塞壬》（The Sirens of Titan）

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut

Jacobson 在高中时收到了这本小说，让它在书架上放了多年，最终在疫情期间拿起来阅读。

Jacobson received this novel in high school, let it sit on her shelf for years, and finally picked it up during the pandemic.

“这非常特别。它触及了许多关于生命意义的内容，这与我最初受到空间探测激励的一些原因相联系。空间探测可以将人类团结在一起的想法。那种宇宙视角。”

“It was very special. It touches a lot on the meaning of life, and that connects to some of the reasons I was motivated by space in the first place. The idea that space exploration can bring humanity together. That cosmic perspective.”

隶属于 NASA 兰利研究中心系统分析与概念局。

Part of the Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate at NASA’s Langley Research Center.

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