Landsat Photos: Top Five 'Earth as Art' Images
Link to Video -- best viewed as full screen.
Landsat: Four Decades of Images and Data
space.com
Landsat is an ongoing series of satellites that conduct Earth observations. The satellites have been used to track urban sprawl, monitor the effects of climate change, and see how deforestation affects the surrounding landscape. The program has run continuously since 1972, so scientists have four decades of information in hand to track changes in land use over time.
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That previous very engaging Landstat Video was recommended by the director of NASA, and former astronaut, Charles Bolden:
NASA Chief Lauds Obama's Climate Change Plan
by Megan Gannon, SPACE.com; yahoo.com -- June 26, 2013
President Barack Obama's ambitious new strategy to combat climate change has won big praise from NASA, with the head of the U.S. space agency pledging a steadfast commitment to tracking the health of planet Earth.
"Having looked back at Earth from outer space, I have seen just how fragile our home planet is -- and I'm committed to doing everything I can to help protect it," NASA chief Charles Bolden, a former space shuttle commander, wrote in a NASA blog post Wednesday (June 26).
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NASA's satellite fleet may be among Earth's best witnesses to the effects of climate change. Bolden highlighted some of the 17 missions in NASA's Earth Science program that are currently monitoring the Earth's atmosphere, oceans, weather and climate from a remote perch in space to study and predict changes over time, as well as those due to global warming.
The Landsat satellite series, for example, has provided high resolution images of the planet's surface for the past 40 years and have helped establish a baseline of understanding the Earth's changes, Bolden wrote. He also mentioned the $1.5 billion Earth-observing satellite Suomi/NPP spacecraft, which launched in 2011 and is collecting data for short-term weather forecasts and long-term climate models.
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Here's another stunner:
Earth as History ...
Operation Landstat: NASA's Earth from Space Mission
Link to Video -- best viewed as full screen.
We live on one stunning, fragile, limited planet ... we really should take better care of it.
Wouldn't you agree?