NASA Earth Observatory is an online publishing outlet for
NASAThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
which was created in 1999. It is the principal source of
satellite imagerySatellite imagery consists of photographs of Earth or other planets made by means of artificial satellites.- History :The first images from space were taken on sub-orbital flights. The U.S-launched V-2 flight on October 24, 1946 took one image every 1.5 seconds...
and other scientific information pertaining to the
climateClimate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elemental measurements in a given region over long periods...
and the
environmentThe biophysical environment is the combined modeling of the physical environment and the biological life forms within the environment, and includes all variables, parameters as well as conditions and modes inside the Earth's biosphere. The biophysical environment can be divided into two categories:...
which are being provided by NASA for consumption by the general public. It is funded with public money, as authorized by the
United States CongressThe United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
, and is part of the EOS Project Science Office located at
Goddard Space Flight CenterThe Goddard Space Flight Center is a major NASA space research laboratory established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center. GSFC employs approximately 10,000 civil servants and contractors, and is located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Maryland, USA. GSFC,...
.
NASA Earth Observatory has won the
Webby People's Voice Award in EducationA Webby Award is an international award presented annually by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences for excellence on the Internet with categories in websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile....
three times. There were a series of publicized images issued by the website in 2008, including imagery of clouds streaming over the
Caspian SeaThe Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed body of water on Earth by area, variously classed as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. The sea has a surface area of and a volume of...
, dust storms curling off the coast of
MoroccoMorocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
, the crumbling of the Wilkins Ice Shelf,
Hurricane BerthaHurricane Bertha was a rare early season Cape Verde-type hurricane. It is both the longest-lived July Atlantic tropical cyclone on record, and the easternmost forming July tropical storm on record. The second named storm of the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season, Bertha developed from a tropical wave...
, and others.
External links