NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Image above: Adrift in the central Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Portugal, the Azores Islands appeared poised to take a nearly direct hit from Hurricane Gordon on September 19, 2006.
Image credit: NASA/Jesse Allen
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Aqua Mission
Aqua is a major international Earth Science satellite mission centered at NASA. Launched on May 4, 2002, the satellite has six different Earth-observing instruments on board and is named for the large amount of information being obtained about water in the Earth system from its stream of approximately 89 Gigabytes of data a day. The water variables being measured include almost all elements of the water cycle and involve water in its liquid, solid, and vapor forms. Additional variables being measured include radiative energy fluxes, aerosols, vegetation cover on the land, phytoplankton and dissolved organic matter in the oceans, and air, land, and water temperatures.