The atmosphere was electric at Providence Landing Park in Lompoc, California as the first stage of an Atlas 5 rocket ignited in the distance on February 11, 2013. Cheers erupted at 10:02 a.m. from the hundreds of people gathered there as the rocket rose, gathered itself, then surged into a perfect blue sky over Vandenberg […]
The computer system used to register visitors to Vandenberg Air Force Base wasn’t cooperating when I stopped by to get my ID approved yesterday. That meant I had plenty of time to chat with the two military police officers on duty. I learned two surprising things from them. 1) The base, particularly the beach area, […]
Count it among the things I never thought I would ever do in my lifetime—get up close to a loaded rocket that will carry a satellite into space in less than two days. When your launch is on a Monday, the weekend is still busy, busy, busy. But Saturday morning two days before launch, a […]
Editor’s note: In the coming days, we’ll update this page with the most interesting quotes we hear about Landsat 8 (The Landsat Data Continuity Mission). The newest quotes will go on the top. When we’re inspired, we’ll talk back. “I’m excited to look at the imagery because it’s going to be sharper than we dealt […]
Today is a big day. I just arrived in Los Angeles from DC this afternoon, and I’m heading to Vandenberg Air Force Base in Lompoc, California, to see an Atlas 5 rocket blast Landsat 8 into space. Officially, the satellite is called the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) until it reaches orbit safely, but I’m […]
Many wildfires burn unnoticed in remote forests and grasslands, far from major population centers. Satellites detect the majority of them, but in many cases, images of the fire from the ground are scarce. Not so for an Australian bushfire in January 2013 that passed through the campus of Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales. The world-class […]
Levels of particulate pollution rose above 130 micrograms per cubic meter in Salt Lake City on January 23, 2013. That’s three times the federal clean-air limit, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Or, as the Associated Press put it, roughly equivalent to Los Angeles air on a bad day. “The Salt Lake Valley has […]
Today we have a re-post from one of our colleagues on the sunny side of NASA. Karen C. Fox is a writer for NASA’s Heliophysics division. A new kind of television recently made headlines at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show: Ultra High Definition TV. With four times as many pixels as a current high definition […]
We thought the January puzzler would be tough, but it sure didn’t take Ron Schott long to solve it. We posted the puzzler at 12:56 a.m. Eastern (U.S.) time on January 21; a mere hour-and-thirty-four minutes later Ron posted the correct answer: the Royal Gardens subdivision in Hawaii. (Jeesh, Ron, don’t you sleep?) Ron is […]
In late 2012, floods swamped the United Kingdom and news reports said tens of thousands of residents had been affected. It was the kind of natural hazard the Earth Observatory tries to cover, but floods can be hard to see. When heavy rains are in progress, storm clouds typically hide the flooding from satellite sensors. Even […]
