Image Schématique du Soleil

Schematic Image of the Sun and its Environment

This postcard from my space related collection shows the schematic image of the Sun and its environment. It provides a blue print showing the wide range of phenomena studied by the various experiments on board the spacecraft Ulysses.

Ulysses, decommissioned on June 30, 2009, was a joint robotic space probe to study the Sun by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). The launch of Ulysses was delayed until October 6, 1990 aboard Discovery (mission STS-41) due to the loss of its initially assigned carrier Challenger. It studied the Sun at all latitudes, breaking the limitation that the Sun had been only observed from low solar latitudes due to the Earth's orbit confined on the ecliptic plane. The mission was managed by JPL.

Summer in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

MISR Image

Fifty five years ago on this day, President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act on July 29, 1958. It paved the way for NASA to formally start to operate on Oct. 1, 1958. 

This postcard shows a colorful image, from one of the many missions since NASA opened its door for business, of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Beaufort Sea. It was acquired by the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer's downward-viewing camera on August 16, 2000. 

The swirling patterns on the Beaufort Sea are small ice floes driven by turbulent water patterns. The Refuge has many arctic and subarctic ecosystems, including coastal lagoons, barrier islands, arctic tundra, and mountainous terrain.

Discovery.com has an information piece on "NASA at 55: the Birthing of a Space Agency" by Amy Shira Teitel.

You can learn more about the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer Project at JPL's MISR Project Homepage.

NASA's Earth Observing System in 41 Years

Useful Pursuit of Shadows

Fourty one years ago on July 23, 1972, Landsat 1, the first satellite of the NASA's Earth Observing program, was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Modified from the Nimbus 4 meteorological satellite, the near-polar orbiting satellite had been used as a stabilized, Earth-oriented platform for obtaining ground information for agricultural and forestry resources inventory, geologic survey and cartography, mineral resources exploration, hydrology and water resources studies, and environmental monitoring.

NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS) has since grown into a coordinated series of polar-orbiting and low inclination satellites for long-term global observations of the land surface, biosphere, solid Earth, atmosphere, and oceans. Its current fleet includes Landsat 7, Landsat 8 and CloutSat.

Image by Jenny Mottar, NASA Headquarters

The postcard shows a painting, titled "Useful Pursuit of Shadows" by Graeme Stephens in 2003, that illustrates the CloudSat taking 3D radar images of clouds from Earth orbit. CloudSat was launched in April 2006 to measure how much liquid water and ice are in the clouds, at what altitudes, and how the clouds to reflect and absorb the Sun's energy.

CloudSat is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA 91109. However, a Google search would turn up its address as: La Cañada Flintridge, CA 91011. A blog of LA Times explained why.