The purpose of NASA’s Earth Observatory is to provide a freely-accessible publication on the Internet where the public can obtain new satellite imagery and scientific information about our home planet. The focus is on Earth’s climate and environmental change. In particular, we hope our site is useful to public media and educators. Any and all materials published on the Earth Observatory, including images, are freely available for re-publication or re-use, including commercial purposes, with the following exceptions:

• where copyright is indicated, you must obtain the copyright holder’s permission; we usually provide links to the organization that holds the copyright,
• images from the SeaWiFS sensor older than five years are in the public domain and can be re-used or re-published for any purpose. Images less than five years old can be re-used only for educational or scientific purposes; any commercial use of such images must be coordinated with ORBIMAGE.

We ask that NASA’s Earth Observatory be given credit for its original materials; the only mandatory credit is NASA.

We encourage Earth scientists and science writers from all NASA centers, as well as all agencies and universities affiliated with NASA’s Earth Science Enterprise, to submit articles and/or images for publication on the Earth Observatory. Prospective contributing authors and graphic artists should refer to our Online Style Guide before submitting.