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The Earth Observer: May - Jun, 2009
In This Issue
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- Editor’s Corner Front Cover
- Feature Articles
- Winter Camp: A Blog from the Greenland Summit, Part II4
- Watching the Corn Grow: Field Studies of Remote Sensing of Photosynthesis11
- EOS Faces Growing Risk From Space Debris14
- Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis: Arctic Sea Ice Younger, Thinner as Melt Season Begins19
- Arctic and Antarctic-themed Activities to Bring a Breath of Polar Air to Baltimore21
- Meeting/Workshop Summaries
- JApplications Showcase Summary at GSFC23
- Landsat Science Team Meeting Summary27
- TES Science Team Meeting Summary33
- 2008 CLARREO Workshop37
- In The News
- Ice Bridge Supporting Wilkins Ice Shelf Collapses43
- Try, Try Again: Scientists Prepare for Return to Pine Island Glacier44
- CALIPSO Makes Successful Switch to Backup Laser, Keeping Important Data Stream Alive46
- Regular Features
- EOS Scientists in the News48
- NASA Science Mission Directorate—Science Education Update50
- Science Calendars51
Editor’s Corner
Steve Platnick, EOS Senior Project Scientist – Acting
I’m pleased to report another milestone for the Landsat program. We reported in our last issue that March marked the 25th anniversary of the launch of Landsat 5, and now, on April 15, Landsat 7 celebrated the 10th anniversary of its launch. The Landsat 7 mission operated flawlessly until May 2003 when a hardware component failure left wedge-shaped spaces of missing data on either side of the image. Despite the resulting loss of 22% of the image data from in each scene, Landsat 7 data continues to be highly useful. The excellent data quality, consistent global archiving scheme, and now free data of Landsat 7 are hallmarks of its impressive tenure. Both Landsat 5 and 7 have far exceeded their design life and continue to provide vital images of Earth’s land surface. Congratulations to the Landsat Team on yet another remarkable milestone for the program! You can read a summary of the most recent Landsat Science Team meeting on page 27 of this issue. The summary contains updates on the current Landsat missions (Landsat 5 and 7) and plans for the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM), now targeted for launch at the end of 2012.
In other news, the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) satellite has...
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