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Aura 20 figure 1

Aura at 20 Years

14 min read

Introduction In the 1990s and early 2000s, an international team of engineers and scientists designed an integrated observatory for atmospheric composition – a bold endeavor to provide unprecedented detail that was essential to understanding how Earth’s ozone (O3) layer and…

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Looking Back on Looking Up: The 2024 Total Solar Eclipse

9 min read

Introduction First as a bite, then a half Moon, until crescent-shaped shadows dance through the leaves and the temperature begins to drop – a total solar eclipse can be felt growing in the atmosphere. As the sky darkens in the…

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Seeing “Through the Eyes of NASA” at the 2023 AGU Annual Meeting

8 min read

Introduction  As one navigates the global constellation of scientific conferences offered each year, the annual Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) is the guiding star. The meeting attracts participants from an ensemble of academic disciplines and a sizeable…

ESTO Team Photo

NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office Celebrates 25 Years 

8 min read

Introduction  Many Earth science missions, both airborne and on orbit, can trace their origins to the early technology developments that produced the groundbreaking instruments, instrument components (the parts or subsystems that make up an instrument), and information systems that enabled…

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NASA Earth Science and Education Update: Introducing the Science Activation Program

10 min read

Introduction For many years, The Earth Observer ran a regular NASA Earth Science Education and Public Outreach Update column, the last of which appeared in the May–June 2017 issue of The Earth Observer. At that time, NASA Science Education communications…

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SHADOZ Ozonesonde Network Celebrates 25 Years and 10,000 Profiles

15 min read

Introduction NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center’s (GSFC) Southern Hemisphere Additional OZonesondes (SHADOZ) network, which coordinates balloon-borne ozonesonde launches from 14 tropical sites through global partnerships (see Figure 1 and Table, below), has reached two milestones: 25 years of operation and…