Did you know you can see penguin poop from space?
That’s right!
Pink piles of poop from those cute flightless birds.
There it is right there!
I’ll have a krill burger with a side order of squid fries please!
Astronauts get to see Earth from the International Space Station every day!
Hello, there!
You know what else gets to Earth from space every day?
Our amazing fleet of satellites!
Hi, my name is Jessica Merzdorf and I’m a NASA science writer.
I write about earth science and satellite missions including
Landsat!
Landsat has been taking pictures of Earth for almost 50 years!
Not, like, pictures that your phone takes.
These are technically 'images,' created by a bunch of encoded bits of data.
From space, we can see changes to the Amazon rainforest,
growing cities like Las Vegas,
the shifting path of the mighty Mississippi river,
and even penguin poop.
Our planet is changing all the time:
From our massive glaciers, to your own neighborhood!
So…if you had the chance, what would you like to see with Landsat?
[beep]
Hi NASA, I would like to ask you a question.
What is under the surface of a volcano?
That’s a great question.
Lots of times there’s a chamber of lava under the surface of a volcano.
Here’s a picture - sorry, image
Landsat took of Kilauea in Hawaii as it’s erupting.
With our special technology on Landsat, we can see the heat coming out of the volcano.
Here’s an image of Mount St. Helens Landsat took in 1979.
And here’s the same volcano right after it erupted in 1980.
Look how the blast from the explosion knocked down the surrounding trees.
Amazing, right?
Now it’s your turn to tell us where you would like to explore!
What others changes do you want to see as they happen on Planet Earth?
Let us know and you could get your question answered
by one of our super smart scientists!
So…where do you want to go?!