Earth Science Missions
Seeing Earth from Space
NASA’s Earth Science Division (ESD) missions help us to understand our planet’s interconnected systems, from a global scale down to minute processes. Using observations from satellites, instruments on the International Space Station, airplanes, balloons, ships and on land, ESD researchers collect data about the science of our planet’s atmospheric motion and composition; land cover, land use and vegetation; ocean currents, temperatures and upper-ocean life; and ice on land and sea.
Active Missions
TEMPO, or Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution, is the first space-based instrument to continuously measure air quality above North America with the resolution of a few square miles. It is a collaboration between NASA and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO).
Mapping soil moisture, detecting whether soils are frozen or thawed, helping scientists understand the links between Earth's water, energy, and carbon cycles, and improve predictions of weather, climate, floods, and droughts.
Future Missions
Space Weather Follow On (SWFO) program develops and deploys operational satellite systems that study space weather and safeguard society.
PACE will help us better understand our ocean and atmosphere by measuring key variables associated with cloud formation, particles and pollutants in the air, and microscopic, floating marine life (phytoplankton). These observations will help us better monitor ocean health, air…
PREFIRE measures a little-studied portion of the radiant energy emitted by Earth for clues about sea ice loss, ice-sheet melting, and a warming Arctic.
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.
