OrbitalHub

NASA dicit:

Tropical Cyclone Freddy lasted more than five weeks. Once a very powerful Category 5 cyclone, Freddy first made landfall along the east coast of Madagascar on February 21st, 2023 just north of the town of Mananjary as a Category 3 cyclone with average winds reported at 130 km/h (~81 mph) with gusts up to 180 km/h (~112 mph). After crossing over Madagascar, Freddy continued westward over the Mozambique Channel before making landfall again and for the first time along the east coast of Mozambique just south of Vilankulos as a moderate tropical storm with sustained winds estimated at 50 mph. However, despite being weaker at landfall, Freddy has resulted in widespread flooding across parts of Mozambique due to the storm stalling out near the coast after making landfall. Incredibly, Freddy then drifted back out over the Mozambique Channel, nearly making landfall again along the southwest coast of Madagascar, before changing direction, re-intensifying, weakening, re-intensifying one last time, and making landfall for the 2nd time in Mozambique as a Category 1 cyclone near Quelimane with sustained winds reported at 90 mph on the 11th of March.

Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Ryan Fitzgibbons (KBRwyle): Lead Producer, Lead Editor/Aaron E. Lepsch (ADNET): Technical Support/George Huffman (NASA/GSFC): Lead Scientist, Lead Narrator/B. Jason West (ADNET): Lead Visualizer/Stephen Lang (SSAI): Lead Writer/Music: “Enlightenment,” Universal Production Music

Wikipedia dicit:

Landsat 8 is an American Earth observation satellite launched on 11 February 2013. It is the eighth satellite in the Landsat program; the seventh to reach orbit successfully. Originally called the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM), it is a collaboration between NASA and the United States Geological Survey (USGS). NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provided development, mission systems engineering, and acquisition of the launch vehicle while the USGS provided for development of the ground systems and will conduct on-going mission operations. It comprises the camera of the Operational Land Imager (OLI) and the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS), which can be used to study Earth surface temperature and is used to study global warming.

The satellite was built by Orbital Sciences Corporation, who served as prime contractor for the mission. The spacecraft’s instruments were constructed by Ball Aerospace & Technologies and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), and its launch was contracted to United Launch Alliance (ULA). During the first 108 days in orbit, LDCM underwent checkout and verification by NASA and on 30 May 2013 operations were transferred from NASA to the USGS when LDCM was officially renamed to Landsat 8.

Credit: NASA Goddard

Wikipedia dicit:

The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission is a satellite altimeter jointly developed and operated by NASA and CNES, the French space agency, in partnership with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and UK Space Agency (UKSA). The objectives of the mission are to make the first global survey of the Earth’s surface water, to observe the fine details of the ocean surface topography, and to measure how terrestrial surface water bodies change over time.

While past satellite missions like the Jason series altimeters (TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1, Jason-2, Jason-3) have provided variation in river and lake water surface elevations at select locations, SWOT will provide the first truly global observations of changing water levels, stream slopes, and inundation extents in rivers, lakes, and floodplains. In the world’s oceans, SWOT will observe ocean circulation at unprecedented scales of 15–25 km (9.3–15.5 mi), approximately an order of magnitude finer than current satellites. Because it uses wide-swath altimetry technology, SWOT will almost completely observe the world’s oceans and freshwater bodies with repeated high-resolution elevation measurements, allowing observations of variations.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CNES

NASA dicit:

The inflatable antenna technology concept was originally called the Large Balloon Reflector (LBR) concept when it was picked up by the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program in 2013. It may have sounded like a wild idea to some at first, but because NASA gave it a chance this technology could revolutionize high-speed communications. NASA 360 takes a look at a NASA Innovative Advanced Concept (NIAC) that launched a business, became a space mission, and could change the way we communicate on Earth.

Video credit: NASA 360

NASA dicit:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-T (GOES-T) satellite spacecraft lifts off from Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 41 at 4:38 p.m. EST, March 1, 2022, on a joint effort with NASA to help meteorologists observe and predict local weather events.

Video credit: NASA’s Kennedy Space Center

NASA dicit:

Hurricanes are some of the most powerful and destructive weather events on Earth. To help study these powerful storms, NASA is launching TROPICS (Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats), a collection of six small satellites designed to measure storm strength by detecting the thermal radiation naturally emitted by the oxygen and water vapor in the air.

In June 2021, NASA launched a test version of the satellite, called a pathfinder, ahead of the constellation of six weather satellites planned for launch in 2022. When launched, the TROPICS satellites will work together to provide near-hourly microwave observations of a storm’s precipitation, temperature, and humidity. The mission is expected to help scientists understand the factors driving tropical cyclone intensification and to improve forecasting models.

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Scientific Visualization Studio/Katie Jepson (KBRwyle): Producer/Ellen T. Gray (ADNET): Writer/William Blackwell (MIT): Scientist/Jonathan North (KBRwyle): Animator/Adriana Manrique Gutierrez (USRA): Animator/Katie Jepson (KBRwyle): Animator/Taylor Johnson: Narration