This article is composed of three independent commentaries about the state of ICON principles (Goldman et al., 2021a) in Earth and Space Science Informatics (ESSI) and includes discussion on the opportunities and challenges of adopting them. Each commentary focuses on a different topic: (Section 2) Global collaboration, cyberinfrastructure, and data sharing; (Section 3) Machine learning for multiscale modeling; (Section 4) Aerial and satellite remote sensing for advancing Earth system model development by integrating field and ancillary data. ESSI addresses data management practices, computation and analysis, and hardware and software infrastructure. Our role in ICON science therefore involves collaborative work to assess, design, implement, and promote practices and tools that enable effective data management, discovery, integration, and reuse for interdisciplinary work in Earth and space science disciplines. Networks of diverse people with expertise across Earth, space, and data science disciplines are essential for efficient and ethical exchanges of FAIR research products and practices. Our challenge is then to coordinate the development of standards, curation practices, and tools that enable integrating and reusing multiple data types, software, multi-scale models, and machine learning approaches across disciplines in a way that is as open and/or FAIR as ethically possible. This is a major endeavor that could greatly increase the pace and potential of interdisciplinary scientific discovery.