NASA SERVIR: ISERV tool enables rapid view of Earth images from space

A screen-capture of the new online map showing available images taken by the ISERV camera system. 

Users can click on a location to see a slideshow of images uploaded by project scientists. 

Credit: NASA

Flipping through online photo albums and social media collections of "selfies" is one thing, but when pictures can show land areas where millions of people live, it can put things in a completely different perspective - especially for scientists.



One of NASA's newest tools for effective Earth observation has been orbiting our planet for more than 15 years.

The International Space Station provides a constant, reliable perspective from which to record changes on the surface of Earth.

A new user-friendly online resource will provide images from a space station camera with nearly two years of images to share.

Danny Hardin, left, an NSSTC senior research scientist from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, trains three researchers from El Salvador to use SERVIR, an NSSTC-developed environmental monitoring system.

Credit: SERVIR

The interface is a world map that links to thousands of images made by the ISERV camera: the International Space Station SERVIR Environmental Research and Visualization System.

With the click of a mouse, the public can access the images with the ISERV Viewer.

People can view and download specific ISERV captures from a collection of more than 4,000 Earth images. ISERV scientists plan to expand the database to about 60,000 by summer 2015.



ISERV was installed as a technology testbed in the Window Observational Research Facility (WORF) on the orbiting laboratory in January 2013 and is scheduled to be removed from operation in 2015.

The camera receives and acts on commands from the ISERV team to acquire image data of specific areas of Earth's surface as the space station passes overhead.

Images from ISERV are uploaded quickly to the web due to a new automated georeferencing capability, allowing imagery to be processed and published much faster.

This is critically important when dealing with a disaster situation. Georeferencing is a process in which points in an image can be associated with geographic locations on a map.

The SERVIR project operates via regional "hubs" in Nairobi, Kenya; Kathmandu, Nepal; and Panama City, Panama, and is coordinated from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

The SERVIR hubs can task the ISERV system to image scenes of Earth's surface in their regions of interest to address environmental issues and disasters.

Much as parents can look back to see how their child has changed over the years, scientists hope that the snapshots gathered by ISERV of land areas before and after environmental changes will improve future response to natural disasters.

Earth Observation: Grand Canyon Geology Lessons on View

The Grand Canyon in northern Arizona is a favorite for astronauts shooting photos from the International Space Station, as well as one of the best-known tourist attractions in the world. 

The steep walls of the Colorado River canyon and its many side canyons make an intricate landscape that contrasts with the dark green, forested plateau to the north and south.

The Colorado River has done all the erosional work of carving away cubic kilometers of rock in a geologically short period of time.

Visible as a darker line snaking along the bottom of the canyon, the river lies at an altitude of 715 meters (2,345 feet), thousands of meters below the North and South Rims.

Temperatures are furnace-like on the river banks in the summer, but Grand Canyon Village, the classic outlook point for visitors, enjoys a milder climate at an altitude of 2,100 meters (6,890 feet).

The Grand Canyon has become a geologic icon—a place where you can almost sense the invisible tectonic forces within the Earth.

The North and South Rims are part of the Kaibab Plateau, a gentle tectonic swell in the landscape. The uplift of the plateau had two pronounced effects on the landscape that show up in this image.

First, in drier parts of the world, forests usually indicate higher places; higher altitudes are cooler and wetter, conditions that allow trees to grow.

The other geologic lesson on view is the canyon itself. Geologists now know that a river can cut a canyon only if the Earth surface rises vertically.

If such uplift is not rapid, a river can maintain its course by eroding huge quantities of rock and forming a canyon.

Image Credit: NASA

NASA Earth Observatory: Sarychev Volcano Eruption View from Space - Video

On June 12, 2009, the International Space Station happened to be passing over the Sarychev Volcano just as it was beginning to erupt.

A newly released video based on several stunning snapshots taken by astronauts reveals the beauty and power of the erupting volcano.

Sarychev Peak, which rises to a height of 4,908 feet (about 1,500 meters), is the tallest peak on Matua Island in the northern part of the Kuril Islands, a Russian archipelago in the northwest Pacific Ocean.

The volcano, one of the most active volcanoes in the Kuril Island chain, erupted in 1989, 1986, 1976 and 1946.

The new volcano animation reveals the plume of ash and steam rising from Sarychev. The plume appears to be brown ash capped with a head of white steam, a result of air rising quickly in a strong updraft, before cooling and condensing.

"The plume was so immense that it cast a large shadow on the island," according to NASA Earth Observatory.

View From Mars Orbiter (MRO) Showing Curiosity Rover at 'Shaler'

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity appears as a bluish dot near the lower right corner of this enhanced-color view from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The rover's tracks are visible extending from the landing site, "Bradbury Landing," in the left half of the scene.

Two bright, relatively blue spots surrounded by darker patches are where the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft's landing jets cleared away reddish surface dust at the landing site.

North is toward the top. For scale, the two parallel lines of the wheel tracks are about 10 feet (3 meters) apart.

HiRISE shot this image on June 27, 2013, when Curiosity was at an outcrop called "Shaler" in the "Glenelg" area of Gale Crater. Subsequently the rover drove away from Glenelg toward the southwest.

When HiRISE captured this view, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was rolled for an eastward-looking angle rather than straight downward.

The afternoon sun illuminated the scene from the western sky, so the lighting was nearly behind the camera. Specifically, the angle from sun to orbiter to rover was just 5.47 degrees. This geometry hides shadows and reveals subtle colour variations.

The image is one product from HiRISE observation ESP_032436_1755. Other image products from this observation are also available.

Image credit: NASA /JPL-Caltech /Univ. of Arizona

An ISS Astronaut's View of the US Colorado Plateau

The Colorado Plateau spans northern Arizona, southern Utah, northwestern New Mexico, and southwestern Colorado. 

This physiographic province is well known for its striking landscapes and broad vistas—an impression that is enhanced by the view from the orbital perspective of the International Space Station. 

This astronaut photograph highlights part of the Utah-Arizona border region of the Plateau, and includes several prominent landforms.

The Colorado River, dammed to form Lake Powell in 1963, crosses from east to west (which is left to right here because the astronaut was looking south; north is towards the bottom of the image). 

The confluence of the Colorado and San Juan Rivers is also visible. Sunglint—sunlight reflected off a water surface back towards the observer—provides a silvery, mirror-like sheen to some areas of the water surfaces.

The geologic uplift of the Colorado Plateau led to rapid downcutting of rivers into the flat sedimentary bedrock, leaving spectacular erosional landforms. 

One such feature, The Rincon, preserves evidence of a former meander bend of the Colorado River.

Image Credit: NASA

NASA, Hubble's Deepest View Of Universe Unveils Never-Before-Seen Galaxies

The image was taken by the HUDF09 team, which has made it available for research by astronomers worldwide.

The photo was taken with the new WFC3/infrared camera on Hubble in late August 2009, during a total of four days of pointing for 173,000 seconds of total exposure time.

The new Wide Field Camera 3 aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken the deepest image yet of the Universe in near-infrared light.

The faintest and reddest objects in the image are likely the oldest galaxies ever identified, having formed between only 600-900 million years after the Big Bang.

In 2004, Hubble created the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), the deepest visible-light image of the Universe, and now, with its brand-new camera, Hubble is seeing even farther. This image was taken in the same region as the visible HUDF, but is taken at longer wavelengths.

Hubble's newly installed Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) collects light from near-infrared wavelengths and therefore looks even farther back towards the Big Bang, because the light from hot young stars in these very distant galaxies is stretched out of the ultraviolet and visible regions of the spectrum into near-infrared wavelengths by the expansion of the Universe.

This new deep view also provides insights into how galaxies grew in their formative years early in the Universe's history.

A boon to astronomers worldwide, the new WFC3 data - taken by the HUDF09 team - have set a multitude of teams to work, furiously searching for the most distant galaxies yet discovered. In just three months, twelve scientific papers on these new data have been submitted.

The image was taken by the HUDF09 team, which has made it available for research by astronomers worldwide. The photo was taken with the new WFC3/infrared camera on Hubble in late August 2009, during a total of four days of pointing for 173 000 seconds of total exposure time.

Infrared light is invisible to the human eye and therefore does not have colours that can be perceived. The representation is "natural" in that shorter infrared wavelengths are represented as blue and the longer wavelengths as red. The faintest objects are about one billion times fainter than the dimmest visible objects seen with the naked eye.

These Hubble observations are blazing a trail for Hubble's successor, the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which will look even farther into the Universe than Hubble, at infrared wavelengths. The launch of JWST is planned for 2014.