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Climate change is an "existential threat to everyone on spaceship Earth" according to NASA's deputy administrator Colonel Pam Melroy.
She, and her boss Bill Nelson, are in New Zealand this week, meeting with space science and engineering students at the University of Auckland; the team at Rocket Lab who successfully launched Aotearoa's first lunar mission CAPSTONE which is now testing a new orbit around the moon for the Lunar Gateway.
They're due at Parliament on Wednesday morning, where five students are set to receive New Zealand Space Scholarships to undertake a programme at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Melroy spoke to Corin Dann.