A newer version of this visualization is available.
NASA Earth Observing Fleet (August 2014)
This animation shows the orbits of NASA's fleet of Earth remote sensing observatories as of August 2014.
The satellites include components of the A-Train:
Recently launched missions:the International Space Station
and eleven others:
These satellites measure tropical rainfall, solar irradiance, clouds, sea surface height, ocean salinity, and other aspects of the global environment. Together, they provide a picture of the Earth as a system.
This is an update of entry 3725. This update was created both for an annual presentation at the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) and for display on the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) hyperwall, a 5 x 3 array of high-definition displays with a total pixel resolution of 9600 x 3240. The version for NASM starts with three flagship missions (Terra, Aqua, and Aura) then fades on the other spacecraft. The hyperwall version shows all of the spacecraft the entire time. The orbits are based on orbital elements with epochs on August 1, 2014. The NASM version is from 00:00:00 GMT to 12:10:26 GMT. The hyperwall version is from 00:00:00 GMT to 07:18:16 GMT.
This is the standard version with all spacecraft on for the entire animation. This version also includes hyperwall frames.
NASM version of the fleet starting with Terra, Aqua, and Aura and then adding the rest of the Earth observing fleet
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
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Animators
- Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC)
- Ernie Wright (USRA)
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Producer
- Alison Schuyler Ogden (NASA/GSFC)
Release date
This page was originally published on Wednesday, September 10, 2014.
This page was last updated on Sunday, November 17, 2024 at 10:15 PM EST.
Missions
This page is related to the following missions:Datasets used
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CelesTrak Spacecraft Orbit Ephemeris
ID: 454This dataset can be found at: http://celestrak.com
See all pages that use this dataset -
BMNG (Blue Marble: Next Generation) [Terra and Aqua: MODIS]
ID: 508Credit: The Blue Marble data is courtesy of Reto Stockli (NASA/GSFC).
This dataset can be found at: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/
See all pages that use this dataset -
GEOS-5 Cubed-Sphere (GEOS-5 Atmospheric Model on the Cubed-Sphere)
ID: 663The model is the GEOS-5 atmospheric model on the cubed-sphere, run at 14-km global resolution for 30-days. GEOS-5 is described here http://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/systems/geos5/ and the cubed-sphere work is described here http://sivo.gsfc.nasa.gov/cubedsphere_overview.html.
See all pages that use this dataset
Note: While we identify the data sets used on this page, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.