NASA's Terra satellite went leaf peeping last week from its perch about 438 miles (705 kilometers) above the planet.
The images were released today (Sept. 30) by NASA's Earth Observatory. In Photos: Fall Foliage Seen from Space As the Earth Observatory notes the brown and orange hues are currently most prominent in Michigan's Upper Peninsula northern Wisconsin upstate New york New hampshire Vermont Maine and southern
Nature Newsthe climate community is counting the costs of losing NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO),
an instrument aboard the European space agency's Envisat that uses similar technology but has much lower resolution.
NASA can also perform some CO2 monitoring with the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder, AIRS, launched aboard the Aqua satellite in 2002.
The European space agency (ESA) is mulling whether to proceed on a more advanced version of the OCO mission.
a researcher who worked on an independent feasibility study of A-SCOPE for ESA at the Laboratory for Climate Sciences and the Environment in Saclay.
Brã on believes that the ESA will not proceed with an A-SCOPE in the near term,
If NASA has the money, he hopes the agency will put another OCO up quickly
The question facing NASA is whether to push forward with an OCO II as fast as possible
NASA ponders'carbon copy'of crashed mission: Nature Newssince the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) crashed into the ocean minutes after its 24 february launch,
researchers at NASA and elsewhere have been working on how else they might get the data on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels that the mission was meant to collect.
Within a week of losing the satellite, NASA, which spent US$278 million and seven years developing OCO, put together a committee of two dozen climate scientists to weigh up various options.
In a recent competition to design atmospheric-science satellites the European space agency eliminated a laser-based carbon-dioxide-monitoring mission
The technology for a similar NASA mission called ASCENDS (Active Sensing of CO2 Emissions over Nights,
So as expected the bottom line of the report by Crisp's committee, submitted to NASA on 2 april
Michael Freilich, head of NASA's Earth-science division, has sent the white paper out for review and says he will make a decision possibly in May.
It might seem that the $150 million recently added to NASA's fiscal-year 2009 budget for Earth science by Congress,
a US Geological Survey land-mapping mission that NASA is procuring, and Glory, a mission due to be launched later this year to studyaerosols
which are, after all, NASA's stock in trade leads politicians and policy-makers to neglect ground-and aircraft-based measurements.
Says Ken Jucks, OCO programme manager at NASA, In all our opinions, the need for these data is just as high,
They show up as hot pixels in the European space agency's Ionia World Fire Atlas, which has mapped fires around the world every month from 1996 to the present.
is an extension of work done by Sassan Saatchi at NASA's Jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena and colleagues,
. wmo. int/wcc3 31 august The ten-person presidential panel deliberating NASA's future, chaired by Norman Augustine,
but Russian space agency Roscosmos said last week that Phobos testing couldn't be completed in time to meet this year's launch window.
The US panel charged with reviewing NASA's human spaceflight programme issued its final report last week,
Present funding doesn't match the space agency's targets, says the commission, which is chaired by ex-aerospace executive Norman Augustine.
A European council summit meeting in Brussels may firm up European promises to finance climate-change action in developing countries. go. nature. com/1kwxls 2 november The European space agency is scheduled to launch its Soil Moisture
The week ahead 9 october NASA's Lunar crater Remote Observation and Sensing Satellite will crash into a crater near the Moon's south pole,
and detecting ice. http://lcross. arc. nasa. gov 15-16 october'The ambitions of Europe in space'European policy-makers,
Under the changes, bodies such as the National Research Council, the National Institute of Nuclear physics and the space agency, will be able to write their own statutes and regulations.
A NASA probe sent crashing into the Cabeus crater near the Moon's north pole on 9 october ploughed up a plume containing water, hydrocarbons and, unexpectedly, mercury,
at a workshop at the European space agency's centre for Earth observation in Frascati, Italy. www. congrex. nl/09c26 21 NOVEMBER Part of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act takes effect in the United states. The act,
The collision sent hundreds of pieces of debris flying at high speed across low-Earth orbit, threatening other satellites and increasing the risk to a NASA shuttle mission to fix the Hubble Space Telescope
To that end, NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency hosted a conference this month to look at strategies for removing debris. The solutions floated include space tugs and Earth-based lasers.
and NASA's US$280 million Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) crashed into the sea, dashing the hopes of scientists who wanted to use the satellite to measure sources
'However, only about half of the money from Congress is new the rest must be gleaned from other NASA Earth science accounts.
Moreover, NASA's budget is likely to be trimmed flat or in the coming years and demands for the agency to launch other Earth-monitoring satellites continue undiminished.
Sassan Saatchi, an environmental scientist at NASA's Jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California, worked on one study with researchers at the carbon consulting firm Winrock International in Arlington, Virginia.
Like the Winrock study, it includes spectral data from NASA satellites as well as laser measurements of forest canopy height from an instrument on NASA's Ice, Cloud,
Sweden. go. nature. com/PUFASN 11 december NASA's orbiting infrared telescope, the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, is scheduled to launch. http://wise. ssl. berkeley. edu 14-18 december The American Geophysical Union meets in San francisco,
Two space missions in the works the European space agency's GAIA, due to launch in 2012, and NASA's Space Interferometry Mission, the launch date for
which is yet to be set will use the technique to search for planets as small as Earth around Sun-like stars,
on 18 february the European space agency selected three medium-sized missions to continue development within its'Cosmic Vision 2015-2025'programme,
The European space agency has postponed the planned 25 february launch of its satellite for monitoring variations in the extent and thickness of polar ice.
Events Wise delivers infrared wisdom NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has offered up the first pictures
NASA announced on 3 february. The mission was slated originally to come to end in 2008, and had already been extended to 2010.
and Technology. go. nature. com/YWJQIN 12 february NASA holds a public'state of the agency'meeting,
The minute specks of dust were collected by NASA's Stardust spacecraft, which launched in 1999 with the aim of catching pristine interstellar grains and bringing them back to Earth.
Indian space agency ISRO's first test flight of a homemade cryogenic engine powered by fuels that are liquid at very low temperatures ended in failure on 15 april,
NASA's ageing research labs are need in dire of an overhaul, according to a report released on 11 may by the National Academies.
and NASA is planning to launch a second version of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory by 2013 (a rocket failure sent the first one hurtling into the Pacific ocean in February 2009).
The US$3. 4-billion mission a collaboration between NASA and the German Aerospace Center has had its share of turmoil
when it was axed temporarily from the NASA budget. Scientific operations should begin in October with full capacity about 800 hours of observation time a year expected by 2014.
The debate began with a 2007 study1 that used data gathered by NASA's Terra satellite to argue that the canopy of the Amazon rainforest grew
In particular, he is pushing for NASA to prioritize a mission called the Hyperspectral Infrared Imager (Hyspiri),
Research Milky way's double bubble Using data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, a team of astronomers declared last week that they had discovered two gargantuan'bubbles'of ray-emitting particles extending north and south of our Galaxy's centre (M. Su et al.
Says Gavin A. Schmidt, a climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New york city and proprietor of the Realclimate blog:
Venus probe flop In a bitter disappointment for Japan's space agency, its Akatsuki spacecraft failed to enter orbit around Venus on 6 december.
NASA expects the craft to ferry astronauts, supplies and research materials to the International Space station when its shuttle fleet retires next year.
NASA chief scientist Waleed Abdalati will be NASA's chief scientist from 3 january, the agency's administrator Charles Bolden announced on 13 december.
A researcher on polar ice who worked at NASA for a decade until 2008, Abdalati is currently director of the Earth science and Observation Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
He is NASA's first chief scientist since James Garvin, who served in the post during 2004 05.
NASA and the German Aerospace Center, who together fund SOFIA, plan two more science flights before Christmas.
NASA waste NASA could end up spending US$575 million on a space programme that has already been cancelled,
This means that NASA has to fund Constellation former president George w bush's programme to return to the Moon and reach Mars, at $200 million a month until 4 march.
Stephen Crooks, climate change programme manager at the environmental consultancy ESA PWA in San francisco, California, estimates that emissions from drained mangroves and salt marshes total half a billion tonnes
Research Comet flyby NASA's Stardust spacecraft sped past comet Tempel 1 on 14 february. The probe,
Coming up 22 23 february In La jolla, California, leading genetics researchers gather to discuss the promise of human genomics over the next decade. go. nature. com/w8zzsx 23 february NASA's Glory
which funds agencies such as NASA and the National Science Foundation. Each subcommittee must now make spending recommendations,
Coming up 14 february NASA's Stardust mission 墉 rebranded NEXT 墉 is due to fly by the comet Tempel 1. It is the first follow-up mission to a comet:
The NASA satellite MODIS (moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer) captured 490 images of the region early last year at a resolution of 250 metres.
Research Shuttle swansong NASA's space shuttle Discovery launched for its 39th and final flight on 24 february, taking six astronauts as well as supplies and additional science capabilities to the International Space station on an 11
NASA's other two shuttles are each due to fly once more this year before the agency's shuttle fleet retires.
Gravity probe B NASA announced on 4 may that its Gravity Probe B mission 墉 conceived
who developed the current method for detecting vegetation using NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer sensor
The heart of the CAO's US$8. 3-million sensing system dubbed the Airborne Taxonomic Mapping System (ATOMS) is a spectroscopic imager designed by engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL
This really has taken everything we have learned at NASA and brought it to bear in the most advanced airborne imaging spectrometer ever built,
NASA/JPL-CALTECHEVENTSCURIOSITY bound for Mars NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, also known as Curiosity, is on its way to Gale crater on Mars. The 900-kilogram rover (pictured,
California. sites. agu. org/fallmeeting5-9 december The first conference on the scientific results from the Kepler exoplanet mission takes place at the NASA Ames Research Park, Moffett Field,
The rift (pictured, around 80 metres wide and 50 metres deep) was seen first in Mid-october by NASA's Operation Icebridge project, which released images last week.
NASA science head John Grunsfeld, an astrophysicist and astronaut who carried out repairs on the Hubble Space Telescope
will head NASA's US$5-billion science mission directorate, the agency confirmed on 19 december. Nature reported the first news of the appointment in November.
A twin Earth NASA's Kepler telescope has reached one of its major mission milestones: discovering another Earth-sized planet.
NASA's twin GRAIL spacecraft are due to ease into orbit around the Moon from where they will start to map lunar gravity in March 2012. go. nature. com/msewftregulation of aviation's greenhouse-gas emissions is set to start in the European union.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/ASUEVENTS Fresh clue to ancient Mars water NASA's Opportunity rover has discovered veins of hydrothermally deposited minerals at the edge of Endeavour crater on Mars. The bright
Chaired by Drew Shindell of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New york, the assessment ranked hundreds of  options for reducing black carbon and ozone pollution according to their potential to reduce warming.
NASA, meanwhile, looks set to lose out, with cuts of 3. 2%to its science budget
and 21%to planetary science leading the agency's administrator Charles Bolden to cancel plans for joint Mars missions with the European space agency.
ESA, CNES, ARIANESPACE, OPTIQUE VIDEO DU CSG, L. MIRARESEARCH Vega launches Europe's Vega rocket, a low-cost launcher intended to get small scientific satellites into low-Earth orbit,
The inaugural launch, from the European space agency's spaceport in Kourou, French guiana, carried nine satellites; its main research payload was the Italian Space agency's Laser Relativity Satellite (LARES, pictured:
sphere on top of the rocket's payload) which will study the Lense-Thirring effect, a distortion of space-time caused by Earth's gravity.
A whiff of interstellar clouda NASA spacecraft has detected directly atoms from outside the boundary of the Solar system
Mccomas presented the results today at NASA s headquarters in WASHINGTON DC, to coincide with the publication of a suite of papers detailing the results in the Astrophysical Journal.
Although a previous NASA mission, Ulysses, measured neutral helium from beyond the heliosphere, IBEX is the first to measure heavier elements, such as oxygen and neon,
15 21 june 2012space X-rays NASA s Nustar telescope, which will examine high-energy X-rays produced at the thresholds of black holes (see Nature 483,255;
After working at NASA, she headed the California Space Institute in San diego, and founded a company, Sally Ride Science,
astronauts and former NASA officials, says that the telescope would be the world s first privately funded deep-space mission.
and US President Barack Obama unveiled an aid package for stricken farmers on 13 Â August 17-23 august NASA s Mars rover Curiosity will attempt its first drive on the red planet next week
although no firm date had been set as Nature went to press. www. nasa. gov/msl19-23 august The American Chemical Society holds its autumn meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
Mars landing NASA announced on 6 Â August that its Mars rover, Curiosity, had landed successfully in Gale Crater after an 8-month journey
He confirmed his field observations with 2006 data from the LANDSAT Earth-observing satellites operated by NASA and the US Geological Survey.
NASA said on 5 october. Space-station missions are restricted usually to six months. The mission will collect more data about how humans react to long stays in space.
the outcome of last week s European space agency (ESA) budget negotiations was expected better than, given the continent s economic troubles.
But for Volker Liebig, ESA s head of Earth observation, there is a sting in the agreement.
The multi-year budget that member states approved which falls some  2  billion (US$2. 6  billion) short of ESA s proposed spending of about  12 Â
but in April ESA lost contact with Envisat, the one satellite providing such data (see Nature 484,423-424;
) Neither Japan s existing Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite nor NASA s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2),
says atmospheric physicist David Crisp of NASA s Jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California, who is the science team leader of OCO-2."A timely launch of this satellite should be among the highest priorities of ESA.
Carbonsat s competitor for ESA funding, FLEX, would also help to pin down carbon sinks, by measuring the faint fluorescence generated by plants during photosynthesis a measure of how efficiently they absorb carbon."
"The last thing we want to do is to destroy the forests or whatever is absorbing almost half of the CO2 that we are emitting,
However, there was better news for other ESA programmes. Europe s Ariane  5 rocket launcher, which is more expensive than competitors,
The costs will be covered in kind by a German-backed plan to provide the propulsion and avionics for NASA s Orion manned spacecraft.
ESA also agreed to Russian involvement in its twin Exomars missions an ambitious programme of orbiters and landers scheduled for launch in 2016 and 2018.
NASA pulled out of the project earlier this year. But ESA s science programme faces a squeeze:
it will receive  508  million a year for the five-year period from 2013 to 2017.
Willy Benz of the University of Bern, chair of ESA s Space science Advisory Committee, says that this could force the agency to delay a future large mission;
which are unaffected by clouds, from a NASA Â probe. When it passed over lush canopy,
according to results from NASA s MESSENGER probe, published on 29 november in Science. Although  the surface of the planet reaches temperatures of 400 °C,
a systems engineer who is spearheading the monitoring initiative at NASA s Jet propulsion laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
25 31 january 2013nasa joins Euclid  NASA is joining a  1-billion (US$1. 3-billion) European space agency mission to explore the dark parts of the Universe.
On 24 Â January the US space agency announced that it would join Euclid, a space telescope that will measure the locations and shapes of some 2 Â billion distant galaxies.
Under the agreement, 40 NASA scientists will join the project and NASA will contribute 20 infrared detectors, valued at around $50 million in total,
for one of the instruments on the spacecraft. The mission is scheduled to launch in 2020. Reed Schererdrilling team reaches Lake Whillans A US research team drilled through 800-metre-thick ice to reach the subglacial Lake Whillans in Western Antarctica on 28 january.
ESA s climate-eye dilemmasnow, trees or the air we breathe? Europe s environmental research community is facing the difficult task of settling
this week to weigh up the scientific benefits of projects proposed for the roughly  300-million (US$390-million) seventh Earth Explorer mission of the European space agency (ESA).
Neither NASA s Landsat programme, which has captured images of Earth since 1972 (see Nature 494,13-14;
And climate scientists have been warning of an impending data crisis after the 2010 retirement of NASA s ICESAT mission,
) Once ESA has decided which it will back, a satellite could be ready for launch by the end of the decade.
Whichever proposal prevails at the Graz meeting is almost certain to be funded by ESA. A final decision is expected at the agency s board meeting in May in Svalbard, Norway,
but ESA has backed the verdict of the scientists in the past.""If I had my way, I would love to see all three missions fly,
Spain, France and Italy last year reduced their contributions to ESA, leaving the agency with  600 million less for its 2013-17 Earth-observation budget than it had hoped for.
says Volker Liebig, director of ESA s Earth-observation programmes. But tight budgets are likely to shrink the size and ambition of future missions."
The rocket is the first vehicle to take off from NASA s new launch pad at the Wallops Flight Facility In virginia.
The flight puts NASA one step closer to having two US cargo carriers available to resupply the International Space station."
said NASA launch commentator Kyle Herring. See go. nature. com/b6oeoz for more. Lawsuit settlement Cancer researcher Philippe Bois has settled a lawsuit against the US Department of health and human services (DHHS) over scientific misconduct, according to an announcement on 18 Â April.
said the European space agency. Astronomers have hailed the legacy of the observatory, which over three years has helped them to revise theories about the birth
Economy rocket The European space agency (ESA) announced the design of its next rocket Ariane  6, on 9  July.
ESA s choice of a more cost-effective design was influenced by competition from rockets abroad, notably the Russian Proton launcher.
NASA/ESA/M. Kornmessertrue blue planet Using the Hubble Space Telescope astronomers have discovered the deep blue hue of exoplanet HD Â 189733 Â b (pictured in an artist s impression) the first planet beyond the Solar system to have its colour directly measured.
Red rover NASA s next Mars explorer will be a leaner meaner version of the Curiosity rover, with one major upgrade:
NASA proposed the mission in December, less than a year after it disappointed planetary scientists by pulling out of Europe-led Mars missions planned for 2016 and 2018.
19 july NASA s Cassini spacecraft turns to image Saturn and its entire ring system while also capturing a picture of Earth from 1. 44 Â billion kilometres away. 20-24 july In Kagoshima, Japan,
S. Wiessinger/NASA Goddard Space Flight Centerastronomers image pink exoplanet A magenta exoplanet 17.5 parsecs from Earth is the lowest-mass planet that has ever been imaged directly orbiting a Sun-like star
outside the Solar system, NASA announced last week. The Subaru Telescope on Mauna kea Hawaii, took pictures of the exoplanet GJ 504b at near-infrared wavelengths with the help of adaptive optics.
NASA launched the US$855-million Landsat  8 probe in February (see Nature 494,13-14;
2013), but the space agency has outlined not yet clear mission objectives or secured sufficient funding for a successor.
Paul E. Alers/NASANASA deputy out NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver (pictured) is resigning after four years,
As second in command to NASA chief Charles Bolden, Garver had a major role in developing initiatives such as commercial space transportation
20 26 september 2013space mission dead After a 7. 6-billion-kilometre journey, NASA s comet-hunting Deep Impact spacecraft is no more.
NASA ponders Kepler s futurenasa just can t quit Kepler. On 15  August, the agency ann  ounced that it would stop trying to revive the failed reaction wheels that gave the planet-hunting telescope its precise pointing ability.
if any, to recommend to NASA headquarters for further review. To secure funding from the space agency, the Kepler team will have to show that the studies could not be done by other telescopes.
This will be no easy task especially given that engineers are not sure how well Kepler can perform with just two of its four spinning reaction wheels,
"We re in a real quandary, says Kepler principal investigator Bill Borucki at NASA s Ames Research center in Moffett Field, California."
. If any of the proposals recommended by the Kepler team seems worthwhile to NASA, they will be examined early next year by a review panel of external scientists.
NASA will make its final funding decisions next June. Not everyone is rooting for Kepler. Doug Finkbeiner, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, wants NASA to support missions that are still healthy.
He has used Fermi to discover two galaxy-sized bubbles of ionized gas blowing from the centre of the Milky way,
says Sassan Saatchi, a remote-sensing scientist at NASA s Jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California, who is leading the data analysis for the project."
The biomass estimates are used then to calibrate imagery from NASA s Landsat spacecraft and radar data from Japan s Advanced Land Observing Satellite,
MAVEN launch NASA s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft is on its way to study the upper atmosphere of the red planet.
22 november The European space agency is scheduled to launch Swarm, a constellation of satellites that will study Earth s magnetic field for four years. go. nature. com/rxaaur24-27 november Science for global sustainable development is the theme of the sixth World Science Forum,
18 november NASA s MAVEN mission to Mars is scheduled to launch. See page 178 for more. 19-21 november In Paris,
NASA/ESA/J. Lotz, M. Mountain, A. Koekemoer & the HFF Team (STSCI) Super-distant galaxies glimpsed Astronomers unveiled pictures of the deepest galaxy cluster ever imaged at the annual meeting
The images from NASA s Hubble Space Telescope are part of the Frontier Fields programme which harnesses the phenomenon of gravitational lensing (see Nature 497,554-556;
Space station stays As space-agency leaders from around the world gathered in WASHINGTON DC to discuss the future of space exploration
In a joint announcement on 8 Â January, Charles Bolden, the head of NASA, and President Barack Obama s chief science adviser John Holdren said that the decision will enable the continuation of short-and long-term research,
20 january The European space agency s Rosetta spacecraft comes out of hibernation in preparation for reaching its destination later this year:
founded in 2010 by three former NASA scientists, is scheduled to launch 28 of its Doves on 8 Â January.
Canada, which has gained access to the space station through a deal with the Russian Federal Space agency.
Landsat, NASA s Earth-observation workhorse, for example, has a resolution of 15-100 Â metres depending on the spectral frequency, with 30 Â metres in the visible-light range.
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