Tag: pathfinder

NASA’s EO-1 Retires After 17 Years
Astronomy and planetary sciences, News, Space flight

NASA’s EO-1 Retires After 17 Years

Earth Observing-1 (EO-1), one of NASA’s pathfinder Earth satellites, was launched back in 2000 as part of their New Millennium Program. Its original mission was designed to last one year and it was designed to operate for about 1.5 times that duration. Seventeen years later, we can safely say that it has far exceeded expectations. Now EO-1 is finally set to retire on March 30, 2017. Some of its achievements include being the first to map active lava flows, track re-growth in the Amazon and measure a methane leak at a facility from space. During its operation, more than 1500 papers were published based on EO-1 research. Fig. Methane emissions detected by EO-1’s Hyperion (Source: earthobservatory.nasa.gov) Two of the instruments on board the EO-1 that made this possible are the Adva...