Launch: December 20,1999  
This satellite is designed to monitor the total amount of the Sun's energy reaching Earth. These data will help climatologists improve their predictions of climate change and global warming over the next century.

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Launch: December 18,1999  
This imaging instrument flying on NASA's Terra satellite is designed to obtain high-resolution global, regional and local views of Earth in 14 color bands.

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Aquarius

Launch: June 9, 2011
   This mission will provide the first-ever global maps of salt concentrations in the ocean surface needed to understand heat transport and storage in the ocean.

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Launch: May 4, 2002  
This instrument flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite to make highly accurate measurements of air temperature, humidity, clouds and surface temperatures.

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Launch: October 15,1997  
A joint endeavor of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency, Cassini arrived at Saturn in June 2004 carrying a record number of 12 instruments. The mission is an intensive study of Saturn's rings, its moons and magnetosphere. Cassini released the Huygens probe towards Saturn's largest moon, Titan and the probe successfully landed on the moon's surface in January 2005.

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Launch: April 28, 2006  
CloudSat is the first satellite that uses an advanced radar to "slice" through clouds to see their vertical structure. Their data will contribute to better predictions of clouds and their role in climate change.

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CloudSat home page

Launch: September 27, 2007  
Dawn, the first spacecraft ever planned to orbit two different bodies after leaving Earth, will orbit Vesta and Ceres, two of the largest asteroids in the solar system.

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Launch: January 12, 2005  
Deep Impact traveled to comet Tempel 1 and deployed an impactor that was essentially "run over" by the nucleus of Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005.

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Launch: October 24, 1998  
Unlike missions focused on science investigations, Deep Space 1 was a spacecraft designed to flight-test new technologies -- including an ion engine that could power solar system explorers of the future. With its primary mission successfully completed, the craft went on an extended mission and flew by comet Borrelly in September 2001, taking the best pictures ever of a comet's nucleus.

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Deformation, Ecosystem Structure and Dynamics of ICE

Proposed Launch: October 2017  
A dedicated U.S. mission using the combined advanced radar technologies of Interferometric Synthetic Aperture and Light Detection and Ranging, optimized for studying hazards and global environmental change.

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Launch: January 12, 2005  
The EPOXI mission recycled the already "in flight" Deep Impact spacecraft to investigate two distinct celestial targets of opportunity. In 2008, Epoxi observed five nearby stars with "transiting extrasolar planets," and later, on Nov. 4, 2010, the spacecraft flew by and investigated comet Hartley 2.

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Launch: January-August, 1958  
Explorer 1 became the first satellite launched by the United States on January 31, 1958. Its main payload was a cosmic ray detector which discovered the Van Allen Radiation Belts. It was followed by four similar satellites, two of which were successful.

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› Explorer 1 home page