Earth From Outer Space

Narrator: This is the crew of Apollo 17...

Five hours after liftoff, the earth already far behind.

Harrison Schmitt: You’re loud and clear, Bob,

and could you give us our distance from the earth, please?

Bob: Roger. I’d guess about 19,000 miles,

but let me get it exact.

Schmitt: Just approximate’s good enough.

Narrator: Harrison Schmitt is bound for the moon.

Schmitt: We were moving at 25,000 miles an hour,

so things got smaller very fast.

Narrator: Schmitt is about to become the first astronaut

to photograph the whole earth.

Schmitt: The Apollo 17 landing site

determined that we would see a nearly full earth

soon after launch.

Look at that.

Yeah, Madagascar.

And Africa!

Hey, there’s Antarctica, it’s all full of snow!

Ok, you want to look?

Narrator: Schmitt’s photograph became known as the blue marble.

Schmitt: A human being took a picture

that then everybody on the planet,

once they saw it, could identify with.

They’d say, well, there’s home up there in the sky.

Schmitt on radio: I tell you, if there ever was

a fragile-appearing piece of blue in space,

it’s the earth right now.

Man: That’s great.

Narrator: 45 years later,

our home planet has been transformed.

Today, the international space station circles the earth,

250 miles up.

A new generation of astronauts has a grandstand view.

Tim peake: I was born in 1972,

the year that the last man walked on the moon in Apollo 17.

Narrator: In 45 years, the human population has doubled

to 7.4 billion.

Astronauts and satellites have a story to tell...

Of startling change on planet earth.

We’ve made strange and beautiful forms...

Nicole stott: It stuns you on every level.

Narrator: ...As we Blaze a trail across our world.

Don pettit: If it wasn’t for that place down there,

I wouldn’t be here in space looking down at it.

It’s like, wow!

Narrator: New cities appear by magic.

Mysteries shimmer in the sun.

Luca parmitano: From space, that captures our attention

and imagination.

Narrator: Astronauts are watching

as we make our Mark on earth.

Don: There’s humans down there.

I’m human. This is a good thing.

Narrator: It’s the story of human progress...

From a unique perspective.

Luca: It is just beautiful.

Narrator: This is how we changed the world,

then looked down to see what we had done.

Woman: You make it sound easy.

Narrator: For astronauts,

the most obvious change in our planet

can be seen from any window.

As the human population grows,

our cities spin a web of light across the globe.

Don: From the first time I flew, which was 2002,

to the last time, which was 2012,

the main effect I saw on earth was at nighttime,

and it was the extent of lighting.

Narrator: Any city of 10 million people is a megacity.

But an astronaut’s camera swallows it whole.

Kjell lindgren: We love taking pictures of cities,

to the point where you can pick out the city

when you just see the photo very quickly.

Narrator: The biggest megacities are Tokyo...

Delhi...

And Shanghai.

Next in line are Mumbai...

Sao Paulo...

And the Chinese capital, Beijing.

Nicole: To see these glowing cities

kind of popping out at you at night

is really pretty incredible.

For me it opened up this whole new view

of looking at places like China.

Narrator: In southeast China, next door to Hong Kong,

an entirely new megacity has grown

from the most humble of beginnings.

Nicole: The change that has happened there,

it’s incredible.

It almost doesn’t seem real.

Narrator: 30 years ago, there was a village called baishizhou.

Population, 1,000.

There was a baby boy, and his name was jet cui.

The boy grew up fast, but the village grew faster.

And the streets of baishizhou became a labyrinth.

Jet cui: Baishizhou is a lot of things, a lot of people,

a lot of stuff, just packed in a really tiny space.

Narrator: Soon it was hard to tell

where one village ended and the next one began.

The streets were so narrow

that neighbors could shake hands across the gap.

Jet: If you get a stranger in there,

I will bet he will never get out from baishizhou.

You have to, like, turn like 20 times to get there.

It’s really easy to get lost.

Narrator: There’s no village on earth like baishizhou.

In less than 40 years

a megacity of 11 million has grown around it.

Its name is shenzhen.

Nicole: You can imagine all of these people

bustling around that area...

But it’s like the mute button is on.

It’s a very surreal thing.

It gets you thinking about

what are all those people doing down there?

Narrator: Jet cui still hangs out

with the boys from the old village.

They’re the same age as the new city,

and their eyes are on the future.

Jet: Electronics!

My business is in electronics industry.

Because of basketball.

Right?

My favorite player is Michael Jordan,

and he said something like, just do it!

But I thought it was, just do I.T.

So I must, I must do I.T., then!

Narrator: Jet’s generation is surfing the wave

of I.T., electronics, and communications.

The city’s vast market has a mind-boggling array

of high-tech products.

Jet: Shenzhen is really, like, high efficiency.

It’s pretty international as well.

Shenzhen has a DNA of... Of starting up something.

There’s a lot of giant enterprise started from here.

Narrator: Shenzhen is home

to the world’s biggest drone company.

And it’s said to make one quarter

of all smart phones sold on earth.

Electronics make the city a Blaze of color.

Don: When you look at a city at night,

you can see the color has changed.

There are now many different colors.

Narrator: Western cities glow orange

from sodium street lights.

Asian cities glow green from Mercury vapor lamps.

But shenzhen is a color-changing chameleon.

Don: You can see bright colors of pinks and blues,

and these are coming from the l.E.D. Billboards

and other l.E.D. Lighting that’s coming out in cities.

Nicole: You just feel like you’re looking

at a place that’s alive.

Narrator: These are the children of the megacity age.

But they haven’t forgotten their village roots.

Jet: Baishizhou is special for us because we grew up there.

We have been through a lot together.

Narrator: Megacities are the shape of things to come.

By 2056, there will be 10 billion people on earth.

We’ll need more megacities, more food, more energy--

more everything.

The question is, does our planet have the resources we need?

In the last 45 years, the human race has doubled.

As we multiply,

the earth glitters with the light of new cities.

But astronauts also see the price we pay for progress.

Tim: To see how fragile our atmosphere is

makes you very aware that we have to be responsible

about how we do things on planet earth.

We are changing the planet

in ways that other species of animals haven’t done before us.

Narrator: Satellites see huge long-term changes.

Central asia’s aral sea

has shrunk dramatically since the sixties.

Since 1980 alaska’s Columbia glacier

has lost half its volume.

In south America,

bolivia’s lake poopo has dried up almost completely.

All three have been traced to man-made causes.

Don: We do not want to foul our nest

to the point where we can no longer live

in the places we want to.

Narrator: The view from space

gives us a vital way to understand changes on earth.

Man: Go ahead, Luca.

Narrator: Astronauts see things

the rest of us can only dream of.

Luca: I do have this very vivid memory of my first spacewalk.

Woman: Luca, ready for motion?

Luca: Ready for motion, go ahead.

While we were over the Atlantic ocean,

the sun came up.

A sunrise while you’re outside, on a spacewalk,

with nothing to do but just observe and let it all sink in.

The blue of the ocean, that super deep blue,

came up all at once.

And then it transformed into the terracotta color of Africa,

that extends and it turns into green.

And you’re looking at the forest of Africa.

And then the majesty of mount Kilimanjaro,