This is NASA's Curious Universe, a show full of wild and wonderful adventures, from our

home planet all the way across the universe.

I'm your host, Patty Boyd.

I'm your host, Jacob Pinter, and you're listening to our series Celebrating Earth.

It's not only our home, it's also the planet NASA studies more than any other.

If this is the first episode you're hearing in the series, we're so glad you're here.

And you should know that there are more stories about our home planet just like this one.

All you have to do is scroll back in your podcast feed.

So far we've covered NASA's view of Earth's ocean, including tracking tiny plankton

by the way they change the color of the ocean surface and measuring sea level rise around

the world.

We also explored NASA's satellite data about Earth's surface and learned how farmers can

use them for better crop management. In this episode, we're tackling the air.

Without an atmosphere, Earth would be a much different place.

It provides the oxygen we breathe, it regulates temperature, and it shields us from some of the dangers of space.

Now, there's not one single way to figure out exactly where the atmosphere ends and where

space begins, but according to one common measurement, the atmosphere extends about 60 miles

above Earth's surface.

At a human scale, the atmosphere is huge.

60 miles is about 10 times higher than commercial airplanes fly.

But from space, the atmosphere looks awfully thin. Here's one way to picture it. If Earth were the size

of a basketball, the atmosphere would be thinner than an American dime. We're about to hear how

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