Science Directorate News & Features
- 2023.03.01 : NASA Air Pollution Sensor Integrated and Tested with Commercial Satellite Host
The TEMPO air pollution sensor is hosted on Intelsat 40e, seen here at the Maxar Technologies facility in Palo Alto, California, where it was built. The instrument and the entire spacecraft recently passed pre-launch testing at the facility. Credits: Courtesy of Maxar +Read More - 2023.01.06 : Retired NASA Earth Radiation Budget Satellite Reenters Atmosphere.
NASA’s retired Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS) reentered Earth’s atmosphere at 11:04 p.m. EST on Sunday, Jan. 8, after almost four decades in space. Launched from the Space Shuttle Challenger on Oct. 5, 1984, the ERBS spacecraft was part of NASA’s three-satellite Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) mission. For 21 of its years in orbit, the ERBS actively investigated how the Earth absorbed and radiated energy from the Sun, and made measurements of stratospheric ozone, water vapor, nitrogen dioxide, and aerosols. + Read More - 2022.11.29 : New space instrument to peer at light reflecting from Earth, achieve record accuracy.
Engineers at LASP work on the sensor for the CLARREO Pathfinder mission. (Image Credit: LASP)
In about a year, a new NASA instrument designed and built in Colorado will ride on the International Space Station (ISS). From there, it will look down at Earth to measure the light reflecting off our planet’s puffy clouds, expansive ice sheets, bodies of water, forests, deserts and other land surfaces. + Read More - 2022.11.15 : Faces of Technology – Meet Emily Gargulinski.
Meet Emily Gargulinski, a NASA Research Engineer at the National Institute of Aerospace. Emily watches fires from space. She uses geospatial data to evaluate what's happening with fires on the ground. As part of her work with NASA Health and Air Quality Applied Sciences Team, or HAQAST, Emily is looking at the impact of small agricultural and range fires. + View the NASA360 YouTube Feature - 2022.09.30 : NASA Science Lead Visits Langley, Hampton University.
Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen visits the rooftop lab at the Measurement Systems Laboratory along with Langley's Acting Deputy Director for Flight Projects David MacDonnell, left, and Langley Deputy Center Director David Young, right. Credits: NASA/David C. His visit included a talk called “Lessons in Leadership” and a stop at Langley’s newest facility, the Measurement Systems Laboratory, which opened in April. There, he learned about Langley’s research into using lidar for wind profiling and about early career activities with the future PolCube satellite instrument. + Read More - 2022.09.29 : NOAA-20 CERES Instrument Now Primary Source for Observing Heat Budget.
"From these measurements, we are able to assess the heat budget of the planet, meaning how much energy is absorbed and how much is emitted," he said. "This is important because, over time, if more energy is absorbed than emitted, Earth will heat up, more ice and snow will melt over land, which will eventually find its way to the ocean and raise sea level, and heat the ocean, which will also cause sea level rise. + Read More - 2022.09.27 : NASA POWER Celebrates 25 Years with Global Community Summit
A NASA applied science program that connects end users in the fields of renewable energy, sustainable buildings and agroclimatology with solar and meteorological datasets celebrated its 25th anniversary Sept. 21 and 22 with a virtual Global Community (GloCo) Summit. The Prediction of Worldwide Energy Resources (POWER) project is led by Paul Stackhouse, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. + Read More - 2022.09.20 : SAGE III Sees Tonga Aerosols, Water Vapor Months After Eruption.
In this photo captured from the ISS in March 2022, the Earth’s limb is shown with a dark thin layer sitting in the bluish color of the stratosphere. This dark thin layer is remnants of the Tonga volcanic plume, lingering in Earth’s stratosphere months after the eruption that occurred in January 2022. Credits: NASA + Read More - 2022.09.16 : GLOBE Clouds Holds Million Match Celebration at NASA Langley
The GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment) Clouds arm of The GLOBE Program held an event to celebrate the recent milestone of one million satellite to cloud observation matches Tuesday, Sept. 13, at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. GLOBE Clouds reached that major milestone July 30. The program to match ground-based cloud observations from students and citizen scientists around the world to those collected by satellites began in 2017. + Read More - 2022.08.22 : SARP Ozone Sondes Coincide with SAGE III/ISS Measurements
A NASA student research program recently took to the stratosphere to make ozone measurements that coincided with events from the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE) III on the International Space Station (ISS), an instrument developed at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. NASA’s Student Airborne Research Program (SARP) is an eight week summer program for rising senior undergraduate students to gain hands-on research experience in all aspects of a scientific campaign, including flying onboard NASA research aircraft to collect data.+ Read More - 2022.08.01 : NASA Cloud Observation Program Nets a Million Satellite Matches.
A NASA-sponsored program that pairs citizen scientist and student observations of clouds with satellite imagery just reached a major milestone — one million satellite matches. The GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment) Clouds arm of The GLOBE Program crossed the millionth-match threshold July 30. GLOBE Cloud observations are matched to observations from multiple satellites. People on the ground see bottom-up, satellites see top-down. When we have both perspectives, we call it a data match. Matching started in 2017. + Read More - 2022.07.29 : NASA Studies Source of Ice Crystals in High Places.
A team of NASA researchers are once again using NASA’s DC-8 airborne laboratory to study ice crystals – and more – within the heart of large thunderstorms in a bid to improve jet engine designs and increase flight safety. The work is part of NASA’s High Ice Water Content (HIWC) research activity, which has previously conducted two flight research campaigns: the first out of Florida in 2015, and the second out of Florida, California, and Hawaii in 2018. Now, the team is back at it again, conducting a flight campaign during July off the southeast coasts of the United States and the Gulf of Mexico. + Learn More - 2022.07.05 : NASA Air Pollution Instrument Completes Satellite Integration.
On June 30, crews successfully completed the first fully integrated powered testing of the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO), instrument on Intelsat IS40e at Maxar Technologies' satellite manufacturing facility in Palo Alto, California. This testing marks the completion of the TEMPO Instrument integration with the IS40e satellite. +Read More - 2022.07.01 : Earth Matters - Skygazing for Science.
The citizen scientists of the GLOBE Program have been playing a vital role in data collection by observing clouds around the globe, especially at times that “match” a satellite flyover. When that happens, the observations from the citizen scientists on the ground are matched with satellite observations that were made near the same time and place. + Read More - 2022.06.23 : NASA Airborne Science Mission Engages with Students in Bermuda.
The Aerosol Cloud meTeorology Interactions oVer the western ATlantic Experiment (ACTIVATE) is in its third and final year of flights measuring interactions between tiny atmospheric particles called aerosols, clouds and meteorology. ACTIVATE is providing much needed data on the development and evolution of low lying marine clouds — an area of climate science in which there is still significant uncertainty. During the outreach event, the ACTIVATE team hosted more than 50 guests in a hangar at L.F. Wade International Airport in St. George's Parish. Attendees included students from three local schools, as well as U.S. Consul General to Bermuda Karen Grissette, researchers from the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences, and members of the Bermuda Civil Aviation Authority. +Read More
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