Tag: Earth observation
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Europe to develop satellite to map plant fluorescence
Artist’s concept of the FLEX satellite, in formation with a Sentinel satellite in the background, measuring plant fluorescence from orbit. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab The European Space Agency has selected a satellite mission to monitor the health of global vegetation over an atmospheric research project to track carbon in Earth’s atmosphere, officials announced Thursday. The competition…
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Intelligence-gathering satellite launched by China
A Chinese Long March 4B rocket launched with the Yaogan 28 satellite at 0706 GMT (2:06 a.m. EST; 3:06 p.m. Beijing time) Sunday. Credit: Xinhua China launched a government-owned surveillance satellite Sunday, adding another member to the country’s reconnaissance network after liftoff on a Long March 4B booster. The Yaogan 28 spacecraft is circling Earth…
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Chinese rocket deploys third Tianhui mapping satellite
A Long March 2D rocket blasts off from the Jiuquan launch center Monday with the Tianhui 1C mapping satellite. Thermal insulation panels are seen shedding from the rocket, a normal feature of a Long March 2D launch. Credit: Xinhua China’s third Tianhui mapping satellite, built for land resource surveys and scientific research, rocketed into space…
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NASA to post new ‘blue marble’ pictures every day
Your daily dose of planet Earth is now just a click away, thanks to a new NASA website hosting photos looking back at the world from a small satellite stationed almost a million miles away, realizing a dream of former Vice President Al Gore nearly two decades ago. The Earth views are not the primary purpose…
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Planet Labs takes rash of launch failures in stride
One of Planet Labs’ satellites captured this shot of a fire burning near Itumbiara, Brazil. Credit: Planet Labs No one had ever lost 26 satellites at once until a launch failure bit Planet Labs last year, temporarily setting back the San Francisco startup’s ambition to map the globe every day. Adding to the sting of…
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China conducts two space launches in short span
A Long March 2D rocket launched Monday with the Gaofen 9 remote sensing satellite. Credit: Xinhua Two space launches from China in a 37-hour span have placed an experimental communications satellite and a sharp-eyed Earth-viewing craft into orbit, according to Chinese state media reports. Neither launch was officially announced ahead of time by Chinese authorities.…
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China conducts two space launches in short span
A Long March 2D rocket launched Monday with the Gaofen 9 remote sensing satellite. Credit: Xinhua Two space launches from China in a 37-hour span have placed an experimental communications satellite and a sharp-eyed Earth-viewing craft into orbit, according to Chinese state media reports. Neither launch was officially announced ahead of time by Chinese authorities.…
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Radar on NASA’s SMAP Earth observing satellite declared lost
Artist’s concept of the SMAP spacecraft and its rotating antenna. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech One-half of the instrument payload aboard NASA’s $916 million Soil Moisture Active Passive satellite has failed after collecting just two months of data, NASA announced Wednesday after weeks of troubleshooting turned up no progress in recovering the sensor. A radiometer instrument on the…
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NASA troubleshoots radar outage on new SMAP satellite
Artist’s concept of the Soil Moisture Active Passive spacecraft in orbit. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Engineers have so far been unable to restart a balky radar aboard NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive environmental satellite launched in January, robbing scientists of the most detailed maps of how much water is locked up in the top layers of Earth’s…
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Watch the moon transit the Earth
Spectacular views from a NOAA space weather observatory show the sunlit far side of the moon crossing the face of the Earth from a distant vantage point a million miles away. The first glimpse of the moon’s transit of Earth from the Deep Space Climate Observatory was released Wednesday by NASA, which runs the Earth-watching…