It's been a long journey. And the science community is absolutely excited about this, naturally, because of the new nature of these observations.

We've not been able to place these brush strokes into the context of a wider canvas.

We've been waiting so long . . . I'm just kind of numb at this point. The excitement will come when the data starts flowing, in May, and we see the Earth like we've never seen it before.

It was kind of frustrating, but everyone's relieved and really very happy this morning. It was a flawless launch.

We haven't seen Earth before like this, and we're going to discover new things about Earth and clouds that we've not experienced before.

The price of a bottle of water for every person in the United States is about what this mission will cost. Just one bottle of water. And yet the information we get about water supplies, the water cycle of the planet, I think is priceless.