On April 7, 2016, multiple satellites captured the birth of two large icebergs that were shed along a crack on Antarctica's Nansen Ice Shelf during persistent strong offshore winds. The icebergs currently pose no threat to shipping, but they may pose a threat to scientific instruments moored to the seafloor to monitor climate change.
The GomX-3 CubeSat, which was ejected from the International Space Station on Oct. 5, 2015, has been tracking aircraft in flight across Earth. Built for the European Space Agency (ESA) by GomSpace in Denmark, the CubeSat's distinctive helical antenna has detected millions of signals from aircraft.
Using satellite data on how water moves around Earth, NASA scientists solved two mysteries about wobbles in the planet’s rotation. Earth's spin axis drifts slowly around the poles; the farthest away it has wobbled since observations began is 37 feet (12 meters). These wobbles don't affect daily life, but they must be taken into account to get accurate results from GPS, Earth-observing satellites and ground-based observatories.
The European Space Agency (ESA) and Australia's national geological survey, Geoscience Australia (GA), partnered to ensure data from EU's Sentinel satellites are accessible in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.
The Commercial UAV Expo published a free report, UAVs in Precision Agriculture, which describes how drone/UAS/UAV technology is reshaping how farmers and growers perform crop scouting, nutrient management, field mapping, drainage assessment and more.
An article in the New York Times Magazine chronicles how data analysts, the government of Palau and a nonprofit organization called SkyTruth are using satellite data to fight fishing poachers in the nation made up of 250 separate islands.
A team of Nevada scientists and unmanned aircraft system (UAS) engineers successfully flight tested the first-ever autonomous cloud-seeding aircraft platform.
A new study by NASA and several partners found that in California's Sierra Nevada, atmospheric river storms are two-and-a-half times more likely than other types of winter storms to result in destructive rain-on-snow events, where rain falls on existing snowpack, causing it to melt.
The Group on Earth Observations (GEO) introduced the Early Warning Crop Monitor (EWCM), a new tool that provides consensus reports on crop conditions in countries at risk of food insecurity in Central and South America, Africa, the Middle East, and Central and East Asia.
Carbon tetrachloride (CCl4), once commonly used as a cleaning agent, is a known air toxin that eats away at the ozone layer. Its production has been banned for many years, but a new CIRES and NOAA study reports those rates are still 30-100 times higher than amounts reported to emission inventories.
