This week’s Climate in Your Pocket presenter is Tassia Owen, who created NASA’s 2024 Earth Day digital tool kit!  She’ll give us a quick tour of this wonderful collection intended for audiences of all ages including activities, handouts, visuals and more. Then she’ll focus in on a select few. We’ll give you some dedicated time to investigate one or two of the resources and then together we’ll discuss how we might use them with our audiences. 

Not celebrating Earth Day? These resources will still be of use for anyone communicating about climate change and environmental stewardship.

It’s appropriate for NASA to commemorate Earth Day. On December 24, 1968 the first photo of Earth from space was snapped by Apollo astronauts, and it helped solidify and propel the growing environmental movement in the United States, ultimately leading to the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. Since then, NASA has expanded observation and research about Earth, ranging from tiny microorganisms to whole Earth systems, from desert to ocean, wilderness to city, generating an amazing array of visuals and science results that inform our actions and decisions about how we live on planet Earth. 

Inspired by her childhood aspirations of saving the planet, Tassia Owen sought to work at the only government agency to see the Earth from an inspiring vantage point, outer space. Owen’s latest project aims to bring Earth Day to everyone by creating a digital kit to help people host their own Earth Day parties.

Tassia Owen has worked on contract at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center supporting NASA education, outreach and communications since 2012. Owen currently works as the outreach coordinator for NASA’s Level-1 and Atmosphere Archive & Distribution System Distributed Active Archive Center (LAADS DAAC). Owen has previously served NASA Earth science as the senior communications specialist with the Terra Mission and other satellite missions including Landsat and Aura. She has also worked as a communications and outreach specialist with NASA’s GLOBE Observer ¬-- a citizen science program, and as the managing editor of Earth Observatory for Kids. In these positions, she is able to combine her background in writing and education to foster better understanding of Earth science. Owen holds a Master’s of Science in Geoscience from Mississippi State University from the Teachers in Geoscience program.

Outside of her professional career, Owen enjoys snowboarding, mountain biking, and hiking on public lands near her home in southwestern Colorado.