Back to Earth: What Life in Space Taught Me About Our Home Planet And Our Mission to Protect It

Inspired by insights gained on the International Space Station, a NASA astronaut offers essential lessons to empower earthbound readers to fight climate change.

When NASA Astronaut Nicole Stott first saw the Earth from space, she was filled with awe. Our shared home was a brilliant blue marble, with a razor thin atmosphere protecting billions of people, including everyone she loved. She realized that we are all bound together on this fragile planet. When she came back to earth, she knew she had to share this vision to help protect it.

Stott knows the scale of the daunting task at hand-and yet, she believes we can set aside our differences and work together to tackle the most challenging planetary problems humanity has ever faced. She knows this, because she's seen it happen, on the International Space Station. Throughout her book, Stott imparts hard-won lessons in high-stakes problem solving, survival, and responding to crisis in space. On a space station, astronauts can't wait for someone else to handle a rescue; and when it comes to our earthbound problems, Stott learned that everyone should live like a crewmember, not like a passenger. In space, where everyone survives in a closed system, everything is local-and Stott discovered that in a profound way, the same is true back at home. Back to Earth distills these lessons and more into seven principles that can be practiced by each and every one of us to make much-needed change.

In addition to sharing stories from her own spaceflight, Stott offers eye-opening insights from scientists and changemakers already sparking meaningful change in their communities and around the globe. She explores the complexities and splendor of the earth's biodiversity, and what it takes to preserve it, with both pioneering scientists on earth and engineers working to enable life in space. She meets with activists who use their time in space to advocate for clean water, and with executives who quit their corporate positions and use their global reach to become environmental leaders.

Through her stirring call to action, Nicole Stott reveals how we each have the power to respect the Earth and one another-and to change our own lives in the process. And, while we're at it, we might just save humanity.