A newer version of this visualization is available.
Earth Observing Fleet (August 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 August 2021. 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 SORCE and the addition of Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich.
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 7
Landsat 8
OCO-2: Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2
SMAP: Soil Moisture Passive Active
Suomi NPP: Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership
Sentinel-6 Micael 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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