OrbitalHub

Wikipedia dicit:

The Van Allen Probes, formerly known as the Radiation Belt Storm Probes, were two robotic spacecraft that were used to study the Van Allen radiation belts that surround Earth. NASA conducted the Van Allen Probes mission as part of the Living With a Star program. Understanding the radiation belt environment and its variability has practical applications in the areas of spacecraft operations, spacecraft system design, mission planning and astronaut safety. The probes were launched on 30 August 2012 and operated for seven years. Both spacecraft were deactivated in 2019 when they ran out of fuel. They are expected to deorbit during the 2030s.

Video credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio/Tom Bridgman (GST): Lead Animator/Scott Wiessinger (USRA): Producer/Genna Duberstein (USRA): Producer/David G. Sibeck (NASA/GSFC): Scientist/Shrikanth G. Kanekal (NASA/GSFC): Scientist

NASA dicit:

Asia’s high mountains are a crucial freshwater source to one-seventh of the world’s population. Snow and glaciers in these mountains contain the largest volume of freshwater outside of Earth’s polar ice sheets, leading hydrologists to nickname this region the “third pole.”

Rapid changes in the region’s climate, however, are affecting glacier flows and snowmelt. Local people are already modifying their land-use practices in response to the changing supply, and the region’s ecology is transforming. Scientists estimate that by 2100, these glaciers could be up to 75% smaller in volume.

NASA’s satellites observe and measure snow and ice cover remotely with multiple types of sensors. This allows scientists to create an authoritative estimate of the water budget of this region and a set of products local policy makers can use in responding to hazards and planning for a changing water supply.

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Katie Jepson (USRA): Lead Producer/Carol Rasmussen (NASA/JPL CalTech): Lead Writer/Bailee DesRocher (USRA): Animator/Music credit: “The Mystery Novelist” by Quentin Bachelet [SACEM]

NASA dicit:

In a generic brick building on the northwestern edge of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center campus in Greenbelt, Maryland, thousands of computers packed in racks the size of vending machines hum in a deafening chorus of data crunching. Day and night, they spit out five quadrillion calculations per second. Known collectively as the Discover supercomputer, these machines are tasked with running sophisticated climate models to predict Earth’s future climate.

But now, they’re also sussing out something much farther away: whether any of the more than 4,000 curiously weird planets beyond our solar system — or exoplanets — discovered in the past two decades could have the ingredients necessary to support life.

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/LK Ward (USRA): Lead Producer/Claire Andreoli (NASA/GSFC): Lead Public Affairs Officer/Lonnie Shekhtman (ADNET): Lead Writer/Alex Kekesi (GST): Lead Visualizer/Anthony DelGenio (NASA/GSFC GISS): Lead Scientist/Avi Mandell (NASA/GSFC): Lead Scientist/Michael J. Way (NASA/GSFC GISS): Scientist/Chris Smith (USRA): Animator/Aaron E. Lepsch (ADNET): Technical Support/Music: “Machine Learning” by Jon Cotton and Ben Niblett; “No Wave” by Julien Vignon; “The Missing Star” by Matthew Charles Gilbert Davidson; all from Universal Production Music

NASA dicit:

Earth’s global surface temperatures in 2019 ranked second-warmest since 1880, according to independent analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Global temperatures in 2019 were 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) warmer than the late 19th century, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. 2019’s temperatures were second only to those of 2016 and continued the planet’s long-term warming trend: the five warmest years on the instrumental record have been the five last years.

Video credit: NASA Goddard

NASA dicit:

The local impacts of the Australian bushfires have been devastating to property and life in Australia while producing extreme air quality impacts throughout the region. As smoke from the massive fires has interacted with the global weather, the transport of smoke plumes around the global have accelerated through deep vertical transport into the upper troposphere and even the lowermost stratosphere, leading to long-range transport around the globe. The smoke from these bushfires will travel across the Southern Ocean completing a global circumnavigation back around to Australia and is particularly pronounced across the southern Pacific Ocean out to South America.

Video credit: NASA

NASA dicit:

The animation shows RGB color images from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite for December 31, 2019 through January 5, 2020. A plume of brown smoke extends from the southeastern coast of Australia, over the Tasman Sea and beyond into the Pacific Ocean.

The overlaid vertical cross sections show CALIPSO lidar observations for these same days. The bright colors indicate the presence of small particles (aerosols) and the white color indicates clouds. Visible in each of the cross sections near 40 degrees south is a thick layer of smoke from the fires at altitudes above 9 miles (14.5 km). The dark shading below these layers is due to the absence of lidar signals below the opaque smoke layers. These layers contain very small particles and have optical properties similar to smoke.

The sequence of CALIPSO and MODIS tracks in the animation indicates the continued transport of the smoke layer to the east. As of Jan. 5, 2020, smoke was detected more than 4,000 miles from the source.

Video Credit: NASA Langley/Roman Kowch