Image from TERRA
Tue, 18 Apr 2023 16:24 EDT

The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, located in Katmai National Park, forms a unique and ashen landscape. Encircled by volcanoes – both active and inactive – it has served as a perfect collection area for huge amounts of volcanic ash.

Image from TERRA
Tue, 20 Sep 2022 10:30 EDT

Water departments in the West are using maps and models originally created by a NASA team to help track water.

Image from TERRA
Thu, 15 Sep 2022 10:00 EDT

NASA and Google broadened an existing partnership to help local governments improve their monitoring and prediction of air quality for better decision making.

Terra’s New Orbit

For nearly 20 years, the Terra satellite maintained a consistent orbital speed and altitude, resulting in a near-constant morning equator crossing time of around 10:30 AM. However, since February 2020, the Terra satellite has been allowed to drift in time to an increasingly-earlier equator crossing. In October 2020, Terra reached a 10:15 AM equator crossing time, and was then lowered about 5km to make room for other upcoming Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) missions, while continuing to drift to an earlier and earlier morning equator crossing time. Despite these orbital changes, Terra instruments will continue to collect high quality earth observations.

In order to inform data users, scientists, and the general public about these orbital changes, the Terra team and NASA Headquarters recently hosted two virtual information workshops. Brief descriptions of these forums, along with links to the webinar recordings, slide decks, and other information resources, are provided in the sections below.