NASA's Orbiting Earth Observing Fleet

While NASA is actively exploring Mars with new landers and orbiters, it's exciting to consider that it already maintains a powerful and diverse fleet around the Earth. NASA's Earth Observing fleet of vehicles constitutes a major milestone in the history of Earth science, facilitating the kinds of wide scale and synergistic research endeavors that until the last decade have been impossible to even consider. Many of the techniques being employed around Earth are a direct offshoot of technological and scientific techniques developed on missions to other worlds. As the Red planet looms large in our view screens, we reflect that NASA's continued commitment to primary research about our home remains a top priority not only to the agency, but to the nation, and the world as a whole. This visualization shows the spacecraft in NASA's Earth Observing fleet. The relative altitudes, speeds, and sun position are correct for 12-01-2003 starting at 5:00 UTC.