A U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and NASA study is looking into how to use CubeSats to better understand and protect the marine environment and the animals that live there, such as whales, sharks and sea turtles. CubeSats are small satellites that can form a state-of-the-art network to track the movement of marine animals with more precision than is
Read more
A constellation of satellites will monitor sea levels on earth over the next decade using advanced microwave radiometers. The satellites, Copernicus Sentinel-6A and Sentinel-6B, are being equipped with payloads and will be launched next year via an international cooperation. Read more about the project at the European Space Agency.
Read more
The American Geophysical Union (AGU) reports that the current U.S. government shutdown is negatively affecting Earth and space science research. Today, AGU released a list of projects affected by the lack of funding, transportation and manpower, and the union invited reporting on problems with immediate loss of real-time data and damage to immersed equipment due to lack of servicing. Projects
Read more
Waters in the Gulf of Mexico had record-breaking high temperatures in the weeks before Hurricane Harvey in Aug. 2017. A recent analysis published by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) shows that the high water temperatures caused increased evaporation that directly correlates with the record-breaking rainfall that flooded the Houston area during the storm. The authors were able to isolate Hurricane
Read more
NASA’s launch of the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) in 1997 began what is now a continuous, global view of both land and ocean life. A new animation captures the entirety of this 20-year record, made possible by multiple satellites, compressing a decades-long view of life on Earth into a captivating few minutes. Watch the full video and read more
Read more
Beginning in summer 2018, twelve groups of scientists will undertake field expeditions to perform robotic sampling, optical instrumentation deployments, light scattering and more as part of a NASA project to more thoroughly understand ocean carbon flux. The project is called EXPORTS (Export Processes in the Ocean from RemoTe Sensing). Two expeditions with investigators from a wide variety of sciences will
Read more