Earth Science Missions

Seeing Earth from Space

By the end of the decade, the five missions of NASA’s Earth System Observatory (ESO) will be providing a holistic, 3D view of our planet from atmosphere to bedrock. The ESO missions – drawn from recommendations of the 2017 Earth Science Decadal Survey – will provide key information to guide decisions related to climate change, severe weather and other natural hazards, wildfires, and global food production. The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) is the ESO pathfinder mission. Competitively selected, PI-led Earth Explorer missions will augment ESO.

Monitoring Earth Via Satellite

An animated view of NASA's Earth observing fleet, as it looks today. This 30 second visualization is updated once per day. Time shown in UTC. Credit: NASA Scientific Visualization Studio / Kel Elkins and Greg Shirah

An image showing Earth from space at a distance, superimposed over the surrounding space are images and names of the current and planned satellites NASA's Earth division will use to observe the planet.

NASA's Earth observing fleet as of 10.31.24