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Earth Observing Fleet (December 2021)
Earth observing fleet for December 2021 - this version includes Landsat-9 in nominal orbit and excludes Landsat-7
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
-
Visualizers
- Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC)
- Ernie Wright (USRA)
-
Kel Elkins
(USRA)
Datasets used
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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 -
BMNG (Blue Marble: Next Generation) [Terra and Aqua: MODIS]
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 on this page, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.
Release date
This page was originally published on Monday, December 13, 2021.
This page was last updated on Monday, March 10, 2025 at 12:11 AM EDT.