Sixty Years of Earth Observations: from Explorer-1 (1958) to CYGNSS (2017)
Visualizations by
Greg Shirah
Released on January 31, 2018
January 31 2018 marks the 60th anniversary of the launch of the Explorer-1 spacecraft and 60 years of Earth observations from space. This visualization shows the orbits of NASA-related near-Earth science missions from the launch of Explorer-1 in 1958 through 2017. These missions include both NASA-run missions as well as missions run by organizations that NASA has partnered with. Twenty-four of these missions are called out as "firsts" in various ways. Here's a link to a version on youtube The following missions are highlighted in green as "firsts":
L1: Sun-Earth Lagrange Point-1 NOTES: The clouds used in this version are from a high resolution GEOS model run at 10 minute time steps interpolated down to the per-frame level.
There are 3 clocks (date/time) driving different aspects of this visualization:
the progession of the orbits as they move around the Earth
the timeline at the top which also drives the exposure of orbits