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Featured Content
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The Legacy Continues: Landsat 9 Moves Landsat Toward a Golden MilestoneThe July-August 2021 issue of The Earth Observer features an article on Landsat 9, which is scheduled to launch on September 16, 2021, from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California onboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 401 rocket. The spacecraft will be inserted into a 705 km near-polar orbit where it will join the Landsat 8 satellite, essentially taking over the position Landsat 7 now occupies in the Morning Constellation. The launch of Landsat 9 will add a new and exciting chapter to the nearly 50-year story of Landsat observations. |
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Connected by Earth: Summary of NASA’s 2021 Virtual Earth Day EventNASA’s 2021 Virtual Earth Day Event was a successful online event. With registration free and open to the public, NASA was able to celebrate Earth Day with more than 7000 registered attendees around the globe. To read about the live webinar events and other activities, turn to page 4 of the May-June 2021 issue of The Earth Observer. |
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NASA’s DEVELOP Program Engages Summer Participants in Virtual ActivitiesDuring DEVELOP’s Spring 2020 term, rapidly evolving circumstances required an ad hoc rollout of a virtual approach to complete the ongoing projects. Participants were roughly seven weeks into the project term in mid-March when the program’s host locations began closing because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In response to these new workplace realities, the DEVELOP Program pivoted from colocating students, emerging professionals, and science advisors at in-person locations to forming virtual teams from across the U.S. Turn to page 4 of the March-April 2021 issue of The Earth Observer to learn more about the DEVELOP Summer 2020 virtual learning experience. |
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NASA Science at the First Virtual AGU Fall MeetingIt is now a familiar routine for NASA’s Science Support Office to end the year coordinating the NASA Science exhibit at the AGU Fall Meeting, held in December each year. But 2020 had different plans in store for everyone, bringing a screeching halt to in-person scientific conferences and events, and hurling the NASA Science exhibit team into new territory: virtual events. The first-ever 100% virtual AGU Fall Meeting, with the tagline Online Everywhere, took place December 1–17, 2020. In an effort to extend the reach of this event, an article in the November-December 2021 issue of The Earth Observer provides screenshots and associated links that visually represent the NASA Science exhibit at the first virtual AGU Fall Meeting. |
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Flying in the “Gap” Between Earth and Space: NASA’s Airborne Science ProgramThe feature article in the September-October issue of The Earth Observer focuses on the NASA ESD’s Airborne Science Program (ASP), which is a critical component of the division effort—flying in the “gap” between satellite and ground-based observations. Airborne Earth science goes back to the 1960s, when NASA retrofitted passenger and military aircraft with equipment that enabled collecting in situ and remote sensing data for the full range of Earth science disciplines. In addition to acquiring unique datasets, aircraft campaigns play a major role in supporting satellite missions through calibration (i.e., measurements) and validation (i.e., retrieved geophysical products) activities as well as providing a testbed for future satellite remote sensing instruments. Please turn to page 4 of this issue to read a comprehensive report on the ASP. |
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2020 Sun–Climate SymposiumObservations of the Sun and Earth from space have revolutionized our view and understanding of how solar variability and other natural and anthropogenic forcings impact Earth’s atmosphere and climate. For more than four decades, the total and spectral solar irradiance and global terrestrial atmosphere and surface have been observed continuously, providing an unprecedented, high-quality time series of data for Sun–climate studies. To learn more, see page 4 of the July-August issue of The Earth Observer. |
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Earth Day at Home with NASAEarth Day celebrated its fiftieth anniversary during an unprecedented time in history as the human race fights back against the global spread of a new, or novel, coronavirus—COVID-19. With Earth Day on the horizon and many NASA personnel continuing to do their jobs remotely, the agency had to think quickly about how to participate in the usual Earth Day celebrations around the globe. In the May-June 2020 issue of The Earth Observer, learn how NASA made the decision to shift its celebration from its traditional in-person event with a variety of hands-on activities to engage the public, to one that could be carried out online, encouraging its web and social media followers to collectively appreciate the wondrous beauty of our planet and the extraordinary science that helps us understand how it all works— from the safety of home. |
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Symposium on Earth Science and Applications from Space with Special Guest Michael FreilichIn January 2020, a Symposium on Earth Science and Applications from Space with Special Guest Michael Freilich took place at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC. The event was organized to pay tribute to the career of Michael Freilich who was director of the Earth Science Division at NASA HQ from 2006–2019, capping off a long and distinguished career in ocean research that spanned nearly 40 years. During his career, Freilich was also a mentor for many other scientists and scientific leaders, many of whom attended the Symposium. We are delighted to refer you to the lead article in the March-April issue of The Earth Observer that provides a detailed summary of the symposium. |
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The Earth Observer: Moving Into 2020The January-February issue of The Earth Observer features NASA’s Land, Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE) program, which celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2019; NASA's Earth to Sky Partnership with the U.S. National Park Service; and NASA's exhibit at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), held December 9-13 in San Francisco, CA—which was AGU’s Centennial meeting. |
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Celebrating 20 Years of NASA’s Earth ObservatoryWhen the virtual doors of NASA’s Earth Observatory website first opened to the public in April 1999, who could have imagined the world that exists today? When the team published their first content, it is likely they had no idea that 20 years later the site would still be publishing—nor how different the world would be in just two decades. Turn to page 4 of the November-December 2019 issue of The Earth Observer to read about EO’s twenty years of communicating NASA Earth Science. |