Terra Satellite Mission Summary

CEOS EO HANDBOOK – MISSION SUMMARY - Terra -

Full Name

Terra (formerly EOS AM-1)
aka EOS AM-1

Status

Operational (extended)

Mission Agencies

NASA , CSA , METI

Launch Date

18 Dec 1999

Mission Links

mission site | data access portal

EOL Date

Sep 2027

EO Portal Info

NORAD Catalog #

25994 (TLE)

International Designator

1999-068A

Orbit Type

Sun-synchronous

Orbit Period

99 minutes

Orbit Sense

Descending

Orbit Inclination

98.2 deg

Orbit Altitude

705 km

Orbit Longitude

Orbit LST

10:05:00.000

Repeat Cycle

16 days

Objectives and Applications

6-year nominal mission life, currently in extended operations. In late 2020, Terra began to drift in its orbit when the mission stopped performing inclination adjust maneuvers. Atmospheric dynamics/water and energy cycles, atmospheric chemistry, physical and radiative properties of clouds, air-land exchanges of energy, carbon and water, vertical profiles of CO and methane vulcanology.

Mission Measurements

Category	Parameter	Instrument(s)
Atmosphere	Aerosols	MISR, MODIS
	Atmospheric Humidity Fields	MODIS
	Atmospheric Winds	MISR
	Cloud type, amount and cloud top temperature	ASTER, MISR, MODIS
	Cloud particle properties and profile	MODIS
	Ozone	MODIS
	Radiation budget	ASTER, CERES, MISR, MODIS
	Trace gases (excluding ozone)	MOPITT
	Atmospheric Temperature Fields	MODIS
Land	Albedo and reflectance	ASTER, MISR, MODIS
	Landscape topography	ASTER
	Vegetation	MISR, MODIS
	Surface temperature (land)	ASTER, MODIS
	Multi-purpose imagery (land)	ASTER, MODIS
Ocean	Ocean colour/biology	MISR, MODIS
	Surface temperature (ocean)	MODIS
	Multi-purpose imagery (ocean)	MODIS
Snow & Ice	Ice sheet topography	ASTER
	Snow cover, edge and depth	MODIS
	Sea ice cover, edge and thickness	ASTER, MODIS

Mission Instruments

ASTER - Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer

CERES - Cloud and the Earth's Radiant Energy System

MISR - Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer

MODIS - MODerate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer

MOPITT - Measurements Of Pollution In The Troposphere

OpenSearch Datasets

Selected IDN OpenSearch Results (search all 890 )
2015 Urban Extents from VIIRS and MODIS for the Continental U.S. Using Machine Learning Methods

ABoVE: Angular-corrected MODIS MAIAC Reflectance across Alaska and Canada, 2000-2017

ABoVE: Burn Severity, Fire Progression, and Field Data, NWT, Canada, 2015-2016

ABoVE: Burn Severity, Fire Progression, Landcover and Field Data, NWT, Canada, 2014

ABoVE: Burned Area, Depth, and Combustion for Alaska and Canada, 2001-2019 $This dataset provides annual gridded estimates of fire locations and associated burn fraction per pixel for Alaska and Canada at approximately 500 m spatial resolution for the period 2001-2019. Gridded predictions of carbon combustion and burn depth for the same period within the ABoVE extended domain using the burn area maps and field data are also available. Fire locations and date of burn (DOB) were detected by MODIS-derived active fire products. Burned area was primarily estimated from finer-scale Landsat imagery using a differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) algorithm and upscaled to an approximate 500 m MODIS resolution. Aboveground combustion, belowground combustion, and burn depth were statistically modeled at the pixel level for every mapped burned pixel in the ABoVE extended domain based on field observations across Alaska and western Canada. Predictor variables included remotely sensed indicators of fire severity, topography, soils, climate, and fire weather. Quality flags for burned area and combustion are available. Fire is the dominant disturbance agent in Alaskan and Canadian boreal ecosystems and releases large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. These data are useful for studies of disturbance, fire ecology, and carbon cycling in boreal ecosystems.$
ABoVE: Corrected MODIS MAIAC Reflectance at Tower Sites, Alaska and Canada, 2000-2016

ABoVE: Dall Sheep Response to Snow and Landscape Covariates, Alaska, 2005-2008

ABoVE: Environmental Conditions During Fall Moose Hunting Seasons, Alaska, 2000-2016

ABoVE: Fractional Open Water Cover for Pan-Arctic and ABoVE-Domain Regions, 2002-2015 $This data set provides land surface fractional open water cover maps for two overlapping regions: the entire pan-Arctic region (latitude > 45 degrees) and the Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) domain across Alaska and Canada. The data are a 10-day averaged time step at 5-km spatial resolution for the period 2002-2015. Data represent the aerial portion of a grid cell covered by open water. The data were produced using high frequency (89 GHz) brightness temperatures from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) and the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2), with other ancillary inputs from AMSR-E/AMSR2 25-km products and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). The resulting data record for fractional water is suitable for documenting open water patterns and inundation dynamics in boreal-Arctic ecosystems experiencing rapid climate change.$
ABoVE: High Resolution Cloud-Free Snow Cover Extent and Snow Depth, Alaska, 2001-2017

Selected FedEO OpenSearch Results (view all 42 results: browser , table )
Terra(Modis) Images (ROSCOSMOS)

TerraSAR-X ESA archive

ADAM Surface Reflectance Database v4.0

TerraSAR-X - ScanSAR Images (TerraSAR-X ScanSAR)

ESA Lakes Climate Change Initiative (Lakes_cci): Lake products, Version 2.1

ESA Permafrost Climate Change Initiative (Permafrost_cci): Permafrost active layer thickness for t...

ESA Lakes Climate Change Initiative (Lakes_cci): Lake products, Version 1.1

ESA Permafrost Climate Change Initiative (Permafrost_cci): Permafrost extent for the Northern Hemisp...

ESA Permafrost Climate Change Initiative (Permafrost_cci): Permafrost Ground Temperature for the Nor...

ESA Permafrost Climate Change Initiative (Permafrost_cci): Permafrost active layer thickness for the...

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