The Latest in NASA Science News

All 48 contiguous United States will now benefit from timely, high-resolution water data. The OpenET program, a public-private collaboration led by consortium partners NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, California State University Monterey Bay, Environmental Defense Fund, Desert Research Institute, Google Earth Engine, and HabitatSeven, provides information on evapotranspiration. Evapotranspiration is the movement of water from […]

Researchers are turning to satellite data to monitor the world’s longest bridges. Due to high costs and logistical challenges, fewer than 1 in 5 bridges extending 492 feet (150 meters) or more have systems installed to track structural changes that might be harbingers of damage or danger. Satellites could more than triple the portion of […]

With the help of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, astronomers have made the first continuous, two-dimensional maps of the outer edge of the Sun’s atmosphere. At this boundary, which scientists call the Alfvén surface, solar material escapes from the Sun to become the solar wind, a million-mile-per-hour stream of particles that flows outward in all directions across the solar system, striking planets, […]

With several hundred blows of a 10-pound (4.5-kilogram) sledgehammer, researchers tested a method to find subsurface caves that could serve as safe underground habitats and research facilities on the Moon and Mars. The team, which includes NASA scientists, conducted their field experiments near Flagstaff, Arizona, and Tulelake, California, in locations that resemble the landscapes future […]

NASA scientists have developed a new set of tools to monitor plant growth under various conditions throughout the growing season. The hope is that land managers could use these tools to detect sudden drops in plant productivity and to respond earlier to events like heat stress, droughts, and cold snaps. Monitoring the productivity, or how […]

Several regions around the world are seeing marked declines in water availability, according to a paper published in the journal Science Advances on July 25. The study, partially funded by NASA, found that dry areas are increasing by about twice the size of California each year. Researchers identified the trend using data collected from 2002 […]

Heat rising from wildfires can create clouds that produce extreme amounts of lightning, but this doesn’t necessarily increase the risk of secondary fires. The mixed blessings of lightning activity over wildfires are the subject of a study in JGR Atmospheres of data from the massive Sparks Lake fire in British Columbia in June 2021. Researchers […]

Researchers have developed a new way to measure near-shore bathymetry using satellite observations alone. Soon after NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite launched into orbit in 2018 on a mission to measure the heights of Earth’s ice, forests, and land cover, scientists examined the data and found something unexpected. As the laser instrument aboard the Ice, Cloud, land, […]

As much as half of the carbon dioxide emissions that result from deforestation and other land-use changes in Southeast Asia could be reduced by saving two kinds of wetlands: peatlands and mangroves, according to a study published in Nature Communications. Wetlands store three to five times more carbon than tropical dryland forests and they absorb […]

Earth is literally inclined to be habitable. After running 93 simulations, NASA-funded researchers have gained a clearer understanding of the parameters that make the orbits of Earth-like planets suitable for land-based lifeforms to thrive. The length of our planet’s day, the tilt of its axis, and other orbital parameters ensure that the seasons, sunlight, and temperatures […]