Tour 2022: NASA's Upcoming Earth Missions

Music: "Kitchen Preparations," "Kinky Boots," "Bossa Baby," "Pleasantville" and "Exotic Encounter" from Universal Production Music

Complete transcript available.

The Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission — SWOT — focuses on the planet’s most precious resource: Water. SWOT will help researchers compile the first global survey of Earth’s surface freshwater and study our changing ocean.

We’re also launching TROPICS — six small satellites designed to help scientists better understand tropical storms and hurricanes. Traveling in pairs in three different orbits, TROPICS will provide near-hourly observations of a storm’s precipitation, temperature, and humidity.

Winds on Earth kick up millions of tons of dust every year. EMIT will use spectroscopy to “fingerprint” different types of dust from its perch on the International Space Station, helping scientists map the areas on Earth that produce different types of dust.

We’ve worked with our partners at NOAA to study Earth for decades. In 2022, the JPSS-2 mission will continue that legacy of monitoring weather, sea surface temperatures, algal blooms, clouds, rainfall, heat, smoke, dust storms, ozone, and air quality.