Surface Deformation and Change<\/strong> as it helps in quantifying models of sea-level and landscape change driven by climate change, hazard forecasts, and disaster impact assessments, including dynamics of earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, glaciers, groundwater, and Earth\u2019s interior.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\nThe Terra Satellite NASA launched in 1999 could capture a lot of this information and meet EOS\u2019s needs for the necessary studies and investigations. Terra was the first satellite to look at Earth system science, collecting multiple types of data dedicated to various areas of Earth science. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
While the original design life for the Terra satellite was 6 years, after 15 years in orbit, Terra has still been collecting valuable data about our planet – all thanks to the dedicated engineers and architects who designed, built and are constantly maintaining the sensors onboard and the satellite itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Terra satellite was launched from the Vandenberg Air Force Base and was successfully placed into a near-polar, sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 705 km (438 mi) in Feb 2000. In 2020, Terra completed its final inclination maneuver, using some of its limited fuel supply, to maintain that crossing time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since that final inclination maneuver, Terra has drifted to an earlier equatorial crossing time (i.e. local solar time of a satellite’s passage over the equator) . With every passing day, the Terra satellite will be lowered to a new orbit where it will be able to collect valuable data at an even earlier crossing time. As Terra moves closer to Earth, the sensors\u2019 views will become narrower leading to slightly narrower swath widths. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although the highest effect of this drift will be noticed in ASTER imagery, each of Terra\u2019s sensors will be affected. Some of these changes could be beneficial to some areas of research \u2013 like land morphology, surface temperature, and climate research. The data collected by Terra over the last 2 decades will continue to contribute to meaningful research of Earth\u2019s Systems science. This will help the Earth Observing System make significant progress on its key focus areas, for years to come!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Terra satellite is a NASA scientific research satellite, launched as a part of EOS that measures Earth’s atmosphere, land, and water.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":35011,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[76,398,176,399,240,257,258,259,397],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entropymag.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35573"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entropymag.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entropymag.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entropymag.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entropymag.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/entropymag.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36449,"href":"https:\/\/entropymag.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35573\/revisions\/36449"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entropymag.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entropymag.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entropymag.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entropymag.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}