Skip to content

BACK TO EARTH

Nicole Stott

What Life in Space Taught Me About Our Home Planet - And Our Mission to Protect It

Inspired by insights gained in spaceflight, a NASA astronaut offers key 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.

Nicole Stott is a NASA astronaut, aquanaut, engineer, and artist, who spent over a hundred days in space aboard the International Space Station and has worked at NASA for nearly thirty years. She had appeared before the United Nations' historic Paris Agreement gathering, and she has also been interviewed on Good Morning America, CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Inspired by her spaceflight experiences, she founded the Space for Art Foundation, and she now speaks to audiences around the world to inspire creative solutions to our planetary challenges. An instrument-rated private pilot and avid diver, Nicole lives in Florida, with her husband, son, and two dogs.
Available products
Book

Published 2021-10-12 by Seal Press

Comments

Stott's wonderful book maps her extraordinary journey from Earth to space and back again. She teaches us how to see our world as the spaceship it really is, and how important it is to take great care of the round blue vehicle in which we all ride.

Stott shows us that Earth is our ship - and if we're not careful, we're sunk. Her experiences convinced her that we can all do something to make the world better. The tasks ahead, and the views, are tremendous.

Back to Earth should be in everybody's home library! Stott has captured the incredible beauty and fragility of our ecologically stressed planet. Writing with the inspirational flair of Carl Sagan, her prose cleverly guides the reader through a wonderfully insightful and inspirational work... and a very human story.

Sometimes you have to leave the planet to love the planet - and certainly to appreciate it fully. That, and much more, is the core message of this wise and artful book. What her trips to space taught her about survival, problem-solving, and our own humanity, she in turn teaches us - making us not just passengers on our planet, but crewmates. I came away from this book a better Earthling than I was when I began it.

A brilliant and poignant manual on what it means to live on Earth. Stott's clarity and eloquence might bring you to tears. It should be read aloud to children, assigned in schools, shared with Congress, and placed in houses of worship.

Russia: AST ; Ukrainian: Noonsphere Global

Stott's insights on Earth's vulnerability are a powerful inspiration to counter indifference, and a spur to fully appreciate and preserve what we have before it's gone.

Back to Earth should be required reading for anyone who asks: "Why do humans go to space?" I have not seen a better description of the balance between the current risks and the beauty of life on our planet. Nicole has succeeded in bringing the astronaut experience to the heart of the reader, sharing not only her stories but also her optimism for a promising future for life on Earth.

Stott came back to Earth with a new mission: urging all of us to protect our one and only 'home.' As an artist, she conveys her spaceflight experiences in her paintings; and in her wonderful book, she finds the words to share her profound and moving journey as a call to action for all of us.

I shared a delicious curry meal off-planet with Nicole on the International Space Station and it felt just like home. When we landed and broke bread again I had a new perspective and appreciation of what it meant to be home. Through Back to Earth Nicole helps us all find that perspective and connection to our home Planet.

Stott conveys the importance of space exploration for our world, as well as the emotional impact it can have on humans, with an astronaut's understanding and an artist's eye. She has a unique perspective on the beauty and fragility of planet Earth, which can help all of us better appreciate our home.

Nicole Stott is that rarest of individuals - at once a wonderful writer, deep thinker, keen observer, inspired artist, and gentle soul. Back to Earth is a gift from this former astronaut to all of us, a deeply moving perspective on our planet - and ourselves - gained from a vantage point reserved for the very few. No one who reads this stunning and hopeful work will forget that humanity shares one home.

Stott inspires us to be a crew member, not just a passenger, on the most important spaceship of all: planet Earth.

Attention Earthlings: you will love this book. It's a smart, witty guide to living on our home planet from one of the only humans to have lived in space and under the sea. Nicole Stott understands our worlds, from algae to stardust. Now she lets us in on the magic. Buy, read, act!

In Back to Earth, my former space crewmate Nicole Stott poignantly captures what astronauts experience when looking at the Earth from space: a life-changing view of a beautiful yet fragile home that is in need of our stewardship. A must-read for all of those who care about this planet - which should be all of us.

Our planet is a spaceship, and we are its crew! This is the story of a down-to-earth astronaut who cares deeply about our planet and all life that shares it as home. Sometimes you have to leave a place to truly appreciate it - nobody tells this tale better than Nicole Stott.

Looking down on Earth from space, Stott witnessed a clean and beautiful blue planet of water. That perspective inspired an exciting mission. Her thought-provoking book is a thrilling call to action to do right by our environment and, even more so, by each other.

Back to Earth offers an extraordinary glimpse of Earth from a view most of us will never witness firsthand. Nicole Stott underscores the urgent need for humanity to take action, while offering hope that we can solve our greatest problems if we work together for the greater good.

In Back to Earth Nicole Stott offers us the precious gift of perspective on human life. With wisdom gained through her unique experiences, Nicole connects the dots between the heavens and Earth, creating an elegant template for living rich lives in harmony with nature. Back To Earth is the answer to 'They should have sent a poet.'

Through the windows of the space station, floating alongside our crewmates from around the world, Nicole Stott and I saw Earthrise together, and understood how fragile our water-filled home is. By turning her journey into a beautifully written work of art, Stott has taken action in a way that few can. Her book is very much needed.