Terra Satellite Wins Award from Popular Science

By David Herring
November 22, 2000

Popular Science magazine chose NASA's Terra spacecraft to receive a year 2000 "Best of What's New" Award in its Aviation and Space Category. The magazine's Technology Editor, Frank Vizard, presented the award to Jon Ranson, Terra Project Scientist, at an award ceremony held on November 9 at Tavern on the Green in New York City.

"The success of the mission is due to the many scientists, engineers, and support personnel who have worked so hard to put the highest quality scientific instruments in orbit," said Ranson. "Data from Terra will ultimately revolutionize our understanding of our home planet."

NASA launched the Terra mission on December 18, 1999, from Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA. After routine deployment and initialization procedures, Terra opened its aperture doors on February 24, 2000, to begin science operations. Since then, the satellite has performed beautifully, collecting about 200 gigabytes (200,000 megabytes) of data per day over the entire globe. A day's worth of Terra data is roughly equal to the amount of data the Hubble Space Telescope collects in a year.

According to Popular Science Editor-in-Chief Cecilia Wessner, "The year 2000 has been one of tremendous change and innovation. This year's [award] winners represent the very pinnacle of technological achievement."

Each year, the magazine's editors review thousands of new products and technological developments and select 100 of them to feature in their annual "Best of What's New" issue in December. This year--the 13th anniversary of the award program--readers can visit the Popular Science Web page (http://www.popsci.com) and vote for the product or technology that they consider to be the best innovation of 2000. On January 5, 2001, Popular Science will crown one of their 100 selections with the Reader's Choice Award.

In a December 2000 review of Terra, the Popular Science editors wrote, "Sometimes it's important to look inward. In that spirit, and with the most advanced Earth sensors ever launched, the satellite Terra is advancing our understanding of the complex processes that govern our climate."

The flagship satellite in NASA's 15-year Earth Observing System program, Terra is a multi-national mission that carries a payload of five complementary sensors--three are American, one is Canadian, and one is Japanese in origin. Collectively, these sensors have the capability of seeing roughly the entire surface of the Earth every day at moderate (up to 250 meter) to coarse (20 kilometer) resolution, as well as zooming in on particular scenes of interest at high (15 meter) resolution. Terra's sensors make measurements in a wide range of "colors" of the spectrum, ranging from visible light out through thermal infrared wavelengths.

During its 6-year (at minimum) lifetime, the goals of the mission are to observe and measure the causes and effects of climate and environmental change, and to help scientists distinguish between natural and man-made changes to the Earth's lands, oceans and lower atmosphere. Ultimately, data from Terra will help researchers revise computer models of how our planet's climate system works well enough to accurately predict changes that might occur over the next century.

Terra is managed by Goddard Space Flight Center for NASA's Office of Earth Sciences. For more information about the Terra mission, visit the Terra Home page

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