A newer version of this visualization is available.
Earth Observing Fleet (December 2021)
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- Visualizations by:
- Greg Shirah
- View full credits
This animation shows the orbits of NASA's fleet of Earth observing spacecraft that are considered operational as of December 2021. Note that Landsat 9 is still completing the commissioning period and is expected to be declared operational in mid-January 2022. The clouds used in this version are from a high resolution GEOS model run at 10 minute time steps interpolated down to the per-frame level.
Changes to this version include: removal of Landsat-7 and addition of Landsat-9.
Spacecraft included:
• Aqua
• Aura
• CALIPSO: Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation
• CYGNSS-1: Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System 1
• CYGNSS-2: Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System 2
• CYGNSS-3: Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System 3
• CYGNSS-4: Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System 4
• CYNGSS-5: Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System 5
• CYGNSS-6: Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System 6
• CYGNSS-7: Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System 7
• CYGNSS-8: Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System 8
• Cloudsat
• GPM: Global Precipitation Measurement
• GRACE-FO-1: Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow On-1
• GRACE-FO-2: Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow On-2
• ICESat-2
• ISS: International Space Station
• Landsat 8
• Landsat 9
• OCO-2: Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2
• SMAP: Soil Moisture Passive Active
• Suomi NPP: Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership
• Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich
• Terra
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
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Visualizers
- Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC) [Lead]
- Ernie Wright (USRA)
- Kel Elkins (USRA)
Datasets used in this visualization
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CelesTrak Spacecraft Orbit Ephemeris
ID: 454This dataset can be found at: http://celestrak.com
See all pages that use this dataset -
Terra and Aqua BMNG (Blue Marble: Next Generation)
ID: 508Credit: The Blue Marble data is courtesy of Reto Stockli (NASA/GSFC).
This dataset can be found at: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/
See all pages that use this dataset -
GEOS Atmospheric Model
ID: 665
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.
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