Planet Earth

  • Released Thursday, October 2, 2014
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Earth is constantly changing, and NASA scientists and engineers are working daily to explore and understand the planet on scales from local to global. Though Earth science has been a key part of NASA’s mission since the agency was founded in 1958, this year has been one of the peaks. Three Earth-observing missions—two satellites and one instrument—have already been launched and two more missions are set to take off later this year. All of these new efforts complement an existing fleet of Earth-observing satellites and research aircraft that monitor our world. Watch the video to see a time-lapse that shows land and cloud changes in the eastern hemisphere as seen by the NASA-NOAA Suomi NPP satellite.

Africa, the Middle East and parts of Europe and Asia can be seen in this image.

Africa, the Middle East and parts of Europe and Asia can be seen in this image.

This image captured on March 30, 2014, was created from observations made by the satellite over eight orbits.

This image captured on March 30, 2014, was created from observations made by the satellite over eight orbits.

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Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Earth Observatory
Suomi NPP satellite image courtesy of NASA/GSFC

Release date

This page was originally published on Thursday, October 2, 2014.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:50 PM EDT.