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We have learned a lot about our home planet by studying it from space. You can imagine that climbing up on top of a big mountain will give you a better view, especially if you have a good pair of binoculars. Putting those "binoculars" into orbit 700 kilometers (about 430 miles) above Earth's surface really gives us a good view.

Earth Observing 1 (EO-1 for short) is a satellite with some really great instruments for taking images and gathering other information about Earth.

It can take such a clear picture you can make out an airplane sitting on a runway-from 430 miles away! This is the island of Oahu, Hawaii, as seen by EO-1.

Here we zoom in on Pearl Harbor, the part of Oahu in the square above. Click on the image to see it in more detail.

EO-1's images can be processed to show exactly where fires are burning or volcanoes are erupting, even in places like Antarctica where hardly anybody ever goes. EO-1 has been in orbit since November 2000. It has been flying right behind the Landsat-7 satellite, which has been in orbit taking pictures of Earth for a long time. EO-1 has some new and improved imaging technologies onboard, which it has been testing to see if they are better than the older technologies on Landsat-7. And guess what? They are! Information about Earth from satellites like EO-1 and Landsat have many uses. The instruments on these satellites gather far more information than any camera that just takes "pictures." The data gathered by these satellites is stored in giant computer databases. It is available for all kinds of people to help them do their jobs. Some of these people are scientists, map makers, agricultural planners, forest managers, city planners, and other protectors and managers of Earth's resources. The data can also be processed to make important details stand out. For example, if someone wants to find out how different kinds of trees are distributed throughout a forest, the different shades of green in the images can be transformed into other colors, so that the pine trees might be purple and the maple trees red! Satellite data can help scientists and others understand and deal with all sorts of problems, such as Volcanos Earthquakes Floods Droughts Forest fires Forest diseases Erosion of beaches Melting of polar ice sheets Oil spills Planning cities Farming (agriculture) Making maps Understanding the history of asteroid impacts EO-1 and all the different new instruments it carries are part of NASA's New Millennium Program. The purpose of this program is to test out new technologies in space, so that they can be used reliably on future space missions. In the case of EO-1, the new and better data that these technologies will provide will help us understand the complexities of how our planet works and how to take better care of it and ourselves.