Spectacular Image from VIIRS First Light
The Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) onboard NASA’s newest Earth-observing satellite acquired its first measurements on 21 November 2011.
The National Polar-Orbiting Operations Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project (NPP) was launched on 28 October 2011 to orbit at an altitude of 512 miles (824 kilometers). The satellite operations team has powered on all of the instruments and the spacecraft is now traveling around Earth at 16,640 miles per hour (eight kilometers per second).
A high-resolution version of the first VIIRS image, taken on 21 November 2011, created by the NASA NPP Team at the Space Science and Engineering Center, UW-Madison, using 3 channels (red, green and blue) of VIIRS data. This image shows the full scene from Hudson Bay to the northern coast of Venezuela.
VIIRS is the largest instrument onboard NPP, weighing in at 556 pounds (252 kilograms). Its data, collected from 22 channels across the electromagnetic spectrum, will be used to observe the Earth’s surface, including fires, ice, ocean color, vegetation, clouds, and land and sea surface temperatures.
VIIRS Photo courtesy of Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems
NPP serves as a bridge mission from NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) of satellites to the next-generation Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) program that will also collect weather and climate data. It extends and improves upon a series of measurements initiated by the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS).
During NPP's five-year life, the mission will extend more than 30 key long-term datasets that include measurements of the atmosphere, land and oceans. NASA has been tracking many of these properties for decades. NPP will continue measurements of land surface vegetation, sea surface temperature, and atmospheric ozone that began more than 25 years ago. Climatologists will use VIIRS data to improve our understanding of global climate change.
Ongoing updates can be found on the CIMSS blog. Both Discover and Wired magazines have articles on the successful placement of the satellite.
UW Communications covered the launch of the satellite on 28 October 2011.
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