Real-life meteor showers are not like what you see in movies — there are no flaming rocks barreling out of the sky blasting holes in buildings, or sending cars hurling many yards through the air. Most meteor showers are caused by debris left behind by comets, icy particles mixed with dust and organics that stand no …
Dr. Jon Ranson is an earth scientist specializing in radar, lidar and remote sensing. As NASA Goddard Space Flight Center DESDynI Lidar Project Scientist and Head of the NASA GFSC Biospheric Sciences Branch in Greenbelt, Maryland, he uses these tools for studying vegetation type and biomass in ecosystem research. Under his guidance the Branch is […]
Western Siberia is, in places, remote. However, much of the region can be accessed by a system of roads and rivers. When planning this expedition, the scientists needed to find the location of GLAS footprints – measurements taken by the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System aboard the ICESat Satellite – in the area as well as find routes to enter those […]
An international team of scientists, led by Dr. Jon Ranson, Head of the Biospheric Sciences Branch at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and Dr. Slava Kharuk of the Sukachev Forest Institute are heading to Siberia this August to study the regions forests. They will work in austere conditions to collect data related to the Earth’s […]
The Elegant Figures blog will be a place for me (Robert Simmon, the Earth Observatory’s lead visualizer) to write about some of the data visualization and information design we do on the Earth Observatory.
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In the very beginning of this blog, I had promised to reveal why noise created by electric guitars pedals&s reminded me of the kind of science we faced during CARES. So, after the closing of the campaign, I want to keep that promise. A microphone in front of an amplifier can generate an endless reverb, […]
It is 6:30 AM and you are waiting for the morning weather briefing to start, in which the meteorological conditions for the next few days are laid out and the science teams go over their flight plans for the day. You were up late last night putting the final touches on the flight plan for […]
Just a brief heads-up, to signal a couple of particularly interesting links. You can check the status of the mission at any time by pointing your browser at this public Wiki page, and make sure we deliver our promises of “flying around” all over California by following the B-200 trajectories on Flight Aware. Just enter NASA529 […]
Why is our satellite mission named “Glory”? I can give you an explanation based on this short movie, which I captured from a downward looking camera on the B-200 during a recent flight. While descending for landing, we encountered a cloud deck, and I received a clue for what, in geek terms, we call a scattering angle of […]
