Earth Observations from Space

Aerial imagery from the International Space Station showcasing varied landscapes, including mountains, rivers, and urban areas.

iss061e048086 (Nov. 19, 2019) --- The Andes mountain range that separates the arid and sub-tropical climates in northern Argentina is pictured as the International Space Station orbits from an altitude of 260 miles.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 38 crewmember. Crewmember indicates South America. Image was released by astronaut on Twitter.

Earth Obsevation taken during a day pass by the Expedition 40 crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Folder lists this as Okavango Swamp CEO target

Earth observation taken during a day pass by the Expedition 40 crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

AS09-26A-3768A (10 March 1969) --- Color infrared photograph of Mexico: Cerro Malinche, east end of neo-volcanic plateau, as seen from the Apollo 9 spacecraft during its 109th revolution of Earth. This picture was taken as a part of the SO65 Multispectral Terrain Photography Experiment.

ISS012-E-15598 (21 Jan. 2006) --- PLEASE ORIENT PHOTO WITH SNOW-COVERED MOUNTAINS AT LOWER RIGHT CORNER. NORTH WILL THEN BE TOWARD BOTTOM. Turin (Torino), Italy is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 12 crewmember on the International Space Station (ISS). Located in the Piemonte region of northwestern Italy, Torino is host of the Twentieth Olympic Winter Games. Venues for the Games include several locations within downtown Torino and the nearby Alps to the west. In this image, the built area of Turin appears dark grayish brown with large building complexes indicated by white roofs (above center of frame). Also shown are the snow-capped Alps visible to the west and north and two tributaries of the Po River, Stura di Lanzo and the Malone River.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

iss061e048086 (Nov. 19, 2019) --- The Andes mountain range that separates the arid and sub-tropical climates in northern Argentina is pictured as the International Space Station orbits from an altitude of 260 miles.

Earth observation taken by Expedition 68 crew. iss068e008954 (Oct. 5, 2022) --- The Mounts of Cantal, the remnants of Europe's largest stratovolcano made up of several summits in southern France, is pictured from the International Space Station as it orbited 263 miles above. Credit: NASA/Kjell Lindgren

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

STS090-736-037 (17 April - 3 May 1998) --- Phoenix, Arizona as photographed with a 70mm handheld camera from the Earth-orbiting Space Shuttle Columbia. Sunglint makes canals and pools very easily identifiable in the frame. Minimal cloud cover during the 16-day Neurolab mission and the flight track of Columbia opened the way for the crew members to photograph more North American cities than most Shuttle missions.

ISS038-E-026862 (8 Jan. 2014) --- The Western Sahara Desert is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 38 crew member on the International Space Station. The infrequent cloud bands over southern Mauritania were photographed with an oblique look angle so that the dark cloud shadows are also a prominent part of the view. Beneath the cloud the Aouker plateau of dark sedimentary rocks appears as a ragged, near-vertical escarpment at top right. Isolated remnants of the plateau appear as dark mesas (flat-topped hills) across the top and near the center of the image. The escarpment is about 250 meters high, with a field of orange-colored dunes at the base (upper right). Prevailing winds in this part of the Sahara Desert blow from the northeast. The wavy dunes are aligned transverse to these winds. The sand that makes the dunes is blown in from a zone immediately upwind (just out of the bottom of the image) where dry river beds and dry lakes provide large quantities of mobile sand

ISS006-E-40113 (19 March 2003) --- An oblique view of the South Island of New Zealand as photographed from the International Space Station by astronaut Donald R. Pettit, NASA ISS science officer and flight engineer for Expedition 6. Nadir point coordinates of the picture are 45.5 degrees south latitude and 166.5 degrees east longitude. The International Space Station was flying at an altitude of 211 nautical miles (391 kilometers) when the photo was taken.

Color satellite image of the Wadi As-Sirhan Basin, Saudi Arabia in 1984, before agricultural activity.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 38 crewmember. Image was released by astronaut on Twitter.

Earth observation taken during a day pass by the Expedition 36 crew.

Earth Observation taken during a day pass by the Expedition 40 crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Folder lists this as India and Himalayans.

Earth observations taken by Expedition 38 crewmember. Image was released by astronaut on Twitter.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

Earth Observation taken during a day pass by the Expedition 40 crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Folder lists this as Chilean volcanos.

. iss069e060945 (Aug. 15, 2023) --- Wildfires near Glacier Peak and Mount Baker in Washington state are pictured from the International Space Station as it orbited 265 miles above North America.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

Earth observation taken during a day pass by the Expedition 40 crew aboard the International Space Station. File identifies it as Straits of Hormuz through Pakistan into India.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

Earth observation taken by the Expedition 42 crew aboard the ISS. Image Image was released by astronaut on Instagram.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 38 crewmember. Image was released by astronaut on Twitter.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

Earth observation taken during a day pass by the Expedition 37 crew.

iss062e103100 (March 20, 2020) --- The Orange River empties into the Atlantic Ocean and separates the nations of Namibia and South Africa. The International Space Station was orbiting 265 miles above the African continent when this photograph was taken.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

iss060e000602 (June 26, 2019) --- The Volga River is the longest river in Europe and runs through Russia with its delta flowing into the Caspian Sea just south of the Kazakhstan border. The International Space Station was orbiting above the Caspian Sea at an altitude of 256 miles when this photograph was taken during Expedition 60.

Acquired by the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer instrument aboard NASA's Terra spacecraft, this image is from the MISR Where on Earth... Mystery Quiz #27. The location is Jordan.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

NASA's Terra spacecraft captured the snowstorm which swept across the eastern United States on December 4 and 5, 2002, bringing the season's first snow to parts of the south and southern Appalachia.

GMT332_23_58_For Huntsville_Terry Virts_spinsat australia_131

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

ISS015-E-10125 (30 May 2007) --- An iceberg in the South Atlantic Ocean is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 15 crewmember on the International Space Station. This iceberg illustrates the remains of a giant iceberg -- designated A22A that broke off Antarctica in 2002. This is one of the largest icebergs to drift as far north as 50 degrees south latitude, bringing it beneath the daylight path of the station. Crewmembers aboard the orbital complex were able to locate the ice mass and photograph it, despite great cloud masses of winter storms in the Southern Ocean. Dimensions of A22A in early June were 49.9 x 23.4 kilometers, giving it an area of 622 square kilometers, or seven times the area of Manhattan Island.

Satellite view of Turkmenistan (with border and mask). This image was compiled from data acquired by LANDSAT 5 & 7 satellites.

ISS043E124378 (04/16/2015) --- NASA astronaut Terry Virts onboard the International Space Station Tweeted this deep beige and red desert image in Africa on Apr. 16, 2015. Terry's comments that accompanied the image were: "Beautiful colors in the northern desert of #Africa".

ISS009-E-22680 (14 September 2004) --- The eye of Ivan was photographed as the category 4 hurricane churned in the Gulf of Mexico late Tuesday (23:05:13 GMT, Sept. 14) by astronaut Edward M. (Mike) Fincke aboard the International Space Station, 230 miles above Earth. At the time, Ivan produced winds of 140 mph. Fincke, the NASA Station Science Officer, and Station Commander Gennady Padalka are in the final month of a six-month mission aboard the research platform.

Earth observation taken by the Expedition 35 crew aboard the ISS.

Earth Observation taken during a day pass by the Expedition 40 crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Folder lists this as EOS South Africa Cape Town JoBurg Vredefort Crater.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

ISS037-E-026753 (4 Nov. 2013) --- One of the Expedition 37 crew members aboard the International Space Station photograph this vertical view of mountainous terrain in Niger, a landlocked country in Africa surrounded by seven other nations.

Images of Iceland's Eyjafyallajökull volcano on May 3, 2010. Figure 1 is a visible image and Figure 2 is in infared. Satellite image.

iss061e004613 (Oct. 9, 2019) --- Looking like a leaf on a vine, the Faiyum Oasis extends west of the Nile River and south of Cairo, Egypt. The fertile area at the left of the photograph is the Nile Delta opening up into the Mediterranean Sea.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

Earth observation taken during a day pass by the Expedition 40 crew aboard the International Space Station. Folder lists this as Buenos Aires and Andes.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

Earth observation taken during a day pass by an Expedition 36 crew member on board the International Space Station (ISS).

(26 June 2005) --- Grasberg Mine, Indonesia is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 11 crewmember on the International Space Station.

Earth observation taken by the Expedition 35 crew aboard the ISS.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

Images of Iceland's Eyjafyallajökull volcano on April 19, 2010. Figure 1 is a visible image and Figure 2 is infared. Satellite image.

Earth observation taken by the Expedition 42 crew aboard the ISS. Mt. St. Helens (center) and Mt. Rainier, Washington. Image was released by astronaut on Instagram.

ISS022-E-005807 (3 Dec. 2009) --- Cloud formations and sunglint near Italy are featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 22 crew member on the International Space Station. This view depicts the Calabria region of southern Italy the toe of Italys boot outlined by the Ionian and Tyrrhenian Seas to the southeast and northwest respectively. The water surfaces present a mirror-like appearance due to sunglint. This phenomenon is caused by sunlight reflecting off the water surface directly back towards the crew member aboard the space station. The ISS was located over northwestern Romania, approximately 1,040 kilometers to the northeast of Calabria, when this image was taken. The Calabrian peninsula appears shortened and distorted due to the high viewing angle from the station. Such imagery is termed oblique, indicating that the view is not looking directly downwards towards Earths surface from the ISS (known as a nadir view). This highly oblique view also highlights two distinct

iss059e067738 (May 19, 2018) --- Snow-capped mountain tops are pictured as the International Space Station orbited 257 miles above the Andes mountain range along the western coast of South America.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

ISS011-E-09647 (27 June 2005) --- Lightning was the suspected cause of this giant wildfire, raging through an area northeast of Phoenix on Monday. This picture, taken shortly after 9 a.m. (CDT), is one of a series of images photographed by astronaut John L. Phillips, Expedition 11 flight engineer and NASA science officer, aboard the orbiting complex, flying at an altitude of 220 miles.

Earth observation taken during a day pass by the Expedition 43 crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Folder lists this as alps.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

iss061e012458 (Oct. 20, 2019) --- Known as the Eye of the Sahara," the Richat Structure in northwestern Mauritania is a circular geologic feature thought to be caused by an uplifted dome—geologists would classify it as a domed anticline—that has been eroded to expose the originally flat rock layers.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

Middle school students across the country photographed the fires and smoke over southern Sumatra from a camera aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis September 27, 1997.

A snowstorm which swept across the eastern United States on December 4 and 5. December 7, 2002. Satellite image.

NASA image acquired August 5, 2010 On August 5, 2010, an enormous chunk of ice, roughly 97 square miles (251 square kilometers) in size, broke off the Petermann Glacier, along the northwestern coast of Greenland. The Canadian Ice Service detected the remote event within hours in near real-time data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASAs Aqua satellite. The Peterman Glacier lost about one-quarter of its 70-kilometer (40-mile) long floating ice shelf, said researchers who analyzed the satellite data at the University of Delaware. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASAs Terra satellite captured these natural-color images of Petermann Glacier 18 05 UTC on August 5, 2010 (top), and 17 15 UTC on July 28, 2010 (bottom). The Terra image of the Petermann Glacier on August 5 was acquired almost 10 hours after the Aqua observation that first recorded the event. By the time Terra took this image, skies were less cloudy than they had bee

ISS033-E-022378 (17 Nov. 2012) --- The Appalachian Mountains in the eastern Unites States are featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 33 crew member on the International Space Station. This regional view shows the striking visual effect of the valley-and-ridge topography of the Appalachian Mountains as viewed from orbit. The view shows more than 300 miles (500 kilometers) of this low mountain chain, from northeast Pennsylvania (lower left) to southern West Virginia, where a dusting of snow can be seen (top center). Sunglint reflections reveal detail of Chesapeake Bay and the great bend of the Potomac River. Cities are difficult to detect from space during daylight hours, so the sickle-shaped bend of the river is a good visual guide for station crew members trying to photograph the nations capital, Washington D.C. (upper left). The farm-dominated Piedmont Plateau is the light-toned area between the mountains and the bay. The Appalachian Mountains appear striped because the

ISS010E12876 (13 January 2005) --- One of a series of post-tsunami digital still images which were photographed from the International Space Station on January 13, 2005. This image is centered at 4.07 degrees north latitude and 96.23 degrees east longitude on the northwest coast of Sumatra. According to NASA scientists studying the ISS imagery, the frame shows a devegetated coastal condition, caused by the tsunami.

The Rio Negro flows southeast through Argentina and empties into the Atlantic Ocean in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 266 miles above the Argentine coast.

Earth Observation taken during a day pass by the Expedition 40 crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Folder lists this as Canada.

ISS022-E-024557 (12 Jan. 2010) --- Male Atoll and Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean are featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 22 crew member on the International Space Station. This detailed photograph features one of the numerous atolls in the Maldive Island chain. The Maldives are an island nation, comprised of twenty-six atolls that stretch in a north-to-south chain for almost 900 kilometers southwest of the Indian subcontinent. The silvery, almost pink sheen on the normally blue water of the equatorial Indian Ocean is the result of sunglint. Sunglint occurs when sunlight is reflected off of a water surface directly back towards the observer in this case a crew member on the space station. Full sunglint in images typically results in bright silver to white coloration of the water surface. Sunglint images can have different hues depending on the roughness of the water surface and atmospheric conditions. They also can reveal numerous details of water circulation whi

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

Syr Darya River Delta, Kazakhstan, True Colour Satellite Image. True colour satellite image of Syr Darya River Delta in Kazakhstan. The river irrigates the whole of Central Asia before emptying in the Aral Sea (top right and bottom left on the image). Composite image using LANDSAT 7 data.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

Very distant view of the approach of the first Cygnus commercial cargo spacecraft built by Orbital Sciences Corp to the International Space Station(ISS) with the Earth in the background. Per Twitter message #Cygnus, approaching us from below as we pass the coast of South Africa.

Sometime between July 10 and July 12, an iceberg about the size of Delaware split off from Antarcticas Larsen C ice shelf. Now that nearly 5,800 square kilometers (2,200 square miles) of ice has broken away, the Larsen C shelf area has shrunk by approximately 10 percent. This false-color image was captured by Landsats Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS). It shows the relative warmth or coolness of the landscape. Orange indicates where the surface is the warmest, most notably the mélange between the new berg and the ice shelf. Light blues and whites are the coldest areas, including the ice shelf and the iceberg. On July 13, the U.S. National Ice Center issued a press release confirming the new iceberg and officially naming it A-68.

Color satellite image of Prudhoe Bay Oil Field, Alaska, United States. Image collected on July 02, 2020 by Sentinel-2 satellites.

Earth observation taken by the Expedition 35 crew aboard the ISS.

Earth observation taken by the Expedition 39 crew aboard the ISS. Image was released by astronaut on Twitter and downlinked in folder Kamchatka.

$This 280-kilometer diameter crater center has experienced a long history of water activity. Within the crater is a heavily faulted and fractured terrain called Aram Chaos that consists of darker volcanic rocks that were disrupted as a result of water and/or magma withdrawal in the subsurface. Above this chaotic terrain are brighter materials made up of different kinds of sulfates that formed when water filled the crater. CRISM data collected along with HiRISE images indicate that the sulfates consist of monohydrated, polyhydrated, and ferric hydroxysulfate, with each composition representing a different geochemical environment within the waters that once resided within Aram Chaos.$

The Andes Mountains are part of the Southern Cordillera formed from subduction zone volcanism at the convergent boundary of the Nazca plate and the South American plate. Aracar volcano (summit elev. 6,082 m) is one of many volcanoes in the Andes Range, located just east of the Argentina-Chile border. February 20, 2000. Satellite image.

Earth observation taken during a day pass by the Expedition 37 crew. Per Twitter message Southern Morocco.

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

ISS008-E-19273 (25 March 2004) --- This image featuring Mumbai, India was taken by an Expedition 8 crewmember on the International Space Station (ISS). Rapid population growth is evident in this image, which shows several regions of the city with active land reclamation activities on its coasts, bays and hinterlands. Hailed as Indias financial capital and center of her film industry, Mumbai is a city that reflects modern progress and potential.

Earth observations taken by Expedition 38 crewmember. Crewmember indicates New Orleans and Cuba. Image was released by astronaut on Twitter.

Earth Observation taken during a day pass by the Expedition 40 crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Folder lists this as Italy, Mt. Etna.

The western portion of Algeria, near the border with Morocco, is pictured from the International Space Station as it orbited 258 miles above the African nation.

First Observation of Columnar Jointing on Mars

Earth observation taken during a day pass by an Expedition 36 crew member on board the International Space Station (ISS).

Earth Observations taken by Expedition 34 crewmember.

Earth observation taken by the Expedition 35 crew aboard the ISS.

ISS010-E-18306 (19 February 2005) --- Patagonia Glacier in Argentina is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 10 crewmember on the International Space Station.

ISS021-E-008371 (16 Oct. 2009) --- The city of Arequipa, Peru is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 21 crew member on the International Space Station. Several Latin American cities have grown up on the flanks of active volcanoes. The city center of Arequipa, Peru lies only 17 kilometers away from the summit of El Misti volcano (partially out of frame at left); the gray urban area is bordered by green agricultural fields. With almost one million residents in 2009, it is the second city of Peru in terms of population. Much of the building stone for Arequipa, known locally as sillar, is quarried from nearby pyroclastic flow deposits that are white in color. Arequipa is known as the White City because of the prevalence of this building material. The Chili River extends northeastwards from the city center, and flows through a canyon (left) between El Misti volcano and Nevado Chachani to the north.

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