Piers Sellers, NASA's leading climate scientist and an astronaut, died on Dec. 23 in Houston at the age of 61. He was was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in October 2015.
Sellers, who took up American citizenship in 1991 to become an astronaut, worked with a missionary-like zeal in spreading awareness about the seriousness of climate change despite his confidence that humans will ultimately steer clear of its risks.
Sellers told a United Nations panel in 2011 that he was convinced about the thin atmosphere both as a climate scientist as well as an astronaut.
"That really brought home to me how easily mankind can affect its own environment. The stuff we breathe, there's not much of it. It's a very thin atmosphere. We better pay attention," said Sellers.
Optimism To Beat Climate Change
In his incumbent role as NASA's deputy director for sciences and exploration at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, Sellers had been pursuing the case of mitigating climate change from an astronaut's perspective.
Going candid in Leonardo DiCaprio's Before the Flood documentary, Sellers tells DiCaprio that the Earth's atmosphere is a "tiny little onion skin" when viewed from space, reinforcing the planet's fragile nature.
Writing for the New York Times after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, Sellers exuded the optimism that his life's work will bear meaning when the ingenuity of humans won't let the planet slip into a dismal future of global warming.
NASA Mourns
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden expressed grief at the passing of Sellers and said the entire NASA family mourns demise of Sellers and hails his commitment in exploration and sharing of new knowledge to the world.
"Piers devoted his life to saving the planet. His legacy will be one not only of urgency that the climate is warming but also of hope that we can yet improve humanity's stewardship of this planet. His cancer diagnosis became a catalyst for him to work even harder on efforts to save the planet from global warming for the benefit of future generations," Bolden added.
Space Walks
Sellers took the first space shuttle flight to the International Space Station in 2002. In three voyages between 2002 and 2010, Sellers did six space walks.
In July 2016, NASA awarded Sellers a Distinguished Service Medal, the highest honor given by the American space agency.
Sellers was born in the town of Crowborough in East Sussex, England on April 11, 1955. As the son of a British army officer, Sellers had high exposure in military posts around the world. As a cadet on the British air force, he learned to fly gliders before driving cars.
Sellers took his degree in ecology from the Edinburgh University and doctorate in biometeorology from Leeds University in 1981. In 1982, he moved to the United States to join NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center as a research meteorologist. Sellers joined the NASA astronaut corps in 1996 after becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen.
