Every day is Earth Day for NASA's fleet of Earth Observing missions
When you think of NASA, you probably think of astronauts, space telescopes, and space exploration, but many NASA missions in orbit are looking back on the Earth.
Some missions like the Landsat series, focus on true color images, providing a view from 400+ miles above the Earth.
Landsat 9 snapped this image of Fort Liberty October 22, 2022. Training drop zones used by paratroopers and other airborne and special forces are clearly visible. More information on the image and a full resolution version is available on NASA's Earth Observatory website.
Images and other data from these missions are even more useful as they are archived over long periods of time, allowing researchers to look for changes.
These missions also work together to produce a more complete understanding of the atmosphere and events like hurricanes.
Researchers used the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite days ahead of Hurricane Florence's landfall near Wilmington in 2018. The satellite's radiometer measures soil moisture in the top 5 centimeters of the ground. This data can help forecasters identify areas most at risk of flooding which can assist local emergency management officials in preparations ahead of the storm.
Ground observations from the National Weather Service were combined with a view from space by the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, a join mission with the Japanese Space Agency, to get a more complete understanding of exactly how much rain Florence brought.
As eastern North Carolina well knows, flooding risk doesn't end when the skies clear. Rivers continue to rise as all that water drains off the land.
The Synthetic Aperture Radar aboard the European Space Agency's Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellites helped better understand that ongoing flooding risk, shown in blue in the map below by looking for reflections of standing water.
To learn more about these and other missions in NASA's fleet of missions looking back at Earth, visit https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov.
