The Satellite Trio

On the 18^th of December 1999, the cleverly named satellite TERRA was launched. Now, 20 years later, TERRA is still changing our knowledge of our rocky planet. It chronicles changes on the surface of the Earth observing the atmosphere, the land and the water.

How does it work?

TERRA has remote sensor systems designed to monitor changes in the Earth’s environment as well as ongoing climate conditions, recording them as they happen. It was the first in a series of satellites from the Earth Observing System that remotely collected ongoing data of the Earth’s condition.

The AQUA mission is a part of NASA’s international Earth Observing System (EOS). Launched on the 4^th of May 2002, it was only supposed to be in orbit for 120 days, however it greatly exceeded that mission and still orbits the Earth today. check-out period can be found here. It was named after the Latin word for water because it’s primary job was monitoring the Earth’s water cycle, but it also has many other important jobs including monitoring the vegetation on land, phytoplankton and organic matter concentrations in the oceans as well as the temperature of the air, water and land surface.

On the 15^th of July in 2004, the 2^nd of the Afternoon Constellation series satellites was launched. Along with AQUA, CALIPSO, CloudSat, PARASOL, GCOM-W1 and OCO-2, AURA was part of the revolutionary A-train group of satellites that changed many old views of the world and helped create the modern Earth Science that we know today.

How does it help us?

AURA measures the ozone and many gasses in the atmosphere, including carbon dioxide, tracking pollution fluctuations and helping many environmental scientists predict what our carbon emission might look like in the future and what we can do to reduce them.