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Along Greenland's western coast, a small field of glaciers surrounds Baffin Bay. This image was acquired by the Landsat 7 satellite on September 3, 2000. It is a false-color composite image made using near-infrared, red and blue wavelengths. 
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Baffin Bay, Greenland
Baffin Bay, Greenland
February 12, 1984: Mission specialist Bruce McCandless II ventures further away from the confines and safety of his ship than any previous astronaut has ever been. This space first was made possible by the Manned Manuevering Unit or MMU, a nitrogen jet-propelled backpack. After a series of test maneuvers inside and above Challenger's payload bay, McCandless went 'free-flying' to a distance of 320 feet away from the Orbiter. This stunning orbital panorama view shows McCandless out there amongst the black and blue of Earth and space.
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TO BOLDLY GO: February 12, ...
To boldly go
A series of rocky outcroppings are a prominent feature of this Sahara Desert landscape near the Terkezi Oasis in the country of Chad. This image was taken by the Landsat 7 satellite on October 22, 2000. It is a false-color composite image made using near infrared, green, and red wavelengths. The image has also been sharpened using the sensor's panchromatic band.
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Terkezi Oasis
Terkezi Oasis
In this image, it’s hard to get a sense of scale or of what we’re actually looking at. This picture, taken by the Landsat-5 satellite on 8 April, 1985, shows sand dunes (yellow streaks) that extend from Algeria into Mauritania in northwest Africa. These wind-blown sand ridges make up Erg Iguidi, one of the Sahara’s ‘sand seas’ in which individual dunes are often more than a third of a mile (500 meters) wide and tall.
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Sea of Sand
Sea of sand
In the style of Van Gogh's painting 'Starry Night,' massive congregations of greenish phytoplankton swirl in the dark water around Gotland, a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea. Phytoplankton are microscopic marine plants that form the first link in nearly all ocean food chains. Population explosions, or blooms, of phytoplankton, like the one shown here, occur when deep currents bring nutrients up to sunlit surface waters, fueling the growth and reproduction of these tiny plants. Image taken by Landsat 7 on July 13, 2005.
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VAN GOGH FROM SPACE: In the...
Van Gogh from space
Captured onboard a NASA Operation IceBridge flight to survey glacier change in a warming world, this photograph shows a beach and stream in Russel Fjord, Alaska, near the terminus of Hubbard Glacier.
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Beached bergs in Alaska
Beached bergs in Alaska
Off the coast of Argentina, strong ocean currents stirred up a colorful brew of floating nutrients and microscopic plant life just in time for the summer solstice. Image taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite on December 21, 2010.
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PATAGONIA BLOOMS: Off the c...
Patagonia blooms
A changing landscape in the heart of Madagascar, showing drainage into the sea in the Betsiboka Estuary due to decimation of rainforests and coastal mangroves. 
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The heart of Madagascar
The heart of Madagascar
The history of sea islands in the Altamaha River delta on the coast of Georgia can be seen in this image. The outlines of long-lost plantation rice fields, canals, dikes and other inlets are clearly defined. Salt marshes are shown in red, while dense cypress and live oak tree canopies are seen in yellow-greens. Image taken by the Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (AIRSAR) on March 9, 2001.
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GEORGIA PATCHWORK: The hist...
Georgia patchwork
A space suit floats freely away from the International Space Station in a scene reminiscent of a sci-fi movie. But this time, no investigation is needed. The suit is actually the world's latest satellite and was launched on February 3, 2006. Dubbed SuitSat-1, the unneeded Russian Orlan spacesuit filled mostly with old clothes was fitted with a radio transmitter and released to orbit the Earth.
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FLOATING FREE: A space suit...
Floating free
This map shows the bright lights of cities and wildfires set against the inky black backdrop of night. The image is actually a composite of satellite data collected over a number of days in April 2012 and October 2012, and is the result of 312 orbits and 2.5 TB of information. The lights seen here are not just from cities; they are also from wildifires, lightning, gas flares and reflected moonlight. Because the image is a composite of several days’ worth of data, fires and other points of light may have been picked up by the satellite and integrated into the composite image even though they were temporary, making some rural locations (such as in Australia) seem brighter than they really are on a typical day.
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Night lights, big cities
Night lights, big cities
Bombetoka Bay in northwestern Madagascar is an inlet of Mozambique Channel, and is at the mouth of the Betsiboka River. Just downstream is the second largest port of Madagascar, the town of Mahajanga, a road terminus and trade center that exports sugar, coffee, spices, cassava, vegetable oils, timber and vanilla. The surrounding area abounds in extensive coffee plantations. Simulated natural color image taken by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on August 23, 2000.
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BOMBETOKA BAY: Bombetoka Ba...
Bombetoka Bay
This beautiful aerial photograph shows a multi-layered lenticular cloud hovering near Mount Discovery in Antarctica, a volcano about 70 kilometers (44 miles) southwest of McMurdo.
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Antarctic Wonders
Antarctic wonders
This photo from NASA’s Curiosity rover shows the Earth as seen from the surface of Mars, shining brighter than any star in the Martian night sky. Earth is the bright point of light a little left of the image’s center and our moon can be seen just below Earth. Curiosity, which landed on the red planet on August 6, 2013, is the largest and most advanced rover ever sent to Mars. It studies the geology of its surroundings and has found evidence of a past environment well-suited to support microbial life. Researchers used the left-eye camera of Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam) to capture this scene about 80 minutes after sunset on the 529th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars (January 31, 2014). The image has been processed to remove cosmic-ray effects. A human observer with normal vision, if standing on Mars, could easily see Earth and the moon as two distinct bright evening ‘stars’. When Curiosity took the photo, Earth was about 99 million miles (160 million kilometers) from Mars. This picture adds to our collection of photos of planet Earth from afar, giving a unique perspective to our place in the cosmos.
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Earth from Mars
Earth from Mars
The Ganges River forms an extensive delta where it empties into the Bay of Bengal. The delta, largely covered with a swamp forest, is home to most of Bangladesh, one of the world’s most densely populated countries and a nation that is particularly vulnerable to climate change. As the climate changes, low-lying Bangladesh will increasingly face issues such as food insecurity, sea level rise and more frequent and intense extreme weather events. About 120 million people live on the Ganges Delta under the threat of repeated catastrophic floods due to heavy runoff of meltwater from the Himalayas and due to the intense rainfall during the monsoon season.  This image was acquired by the Landsat 7 satellite on February 28, 2000. It is a false-color composite image made using green, infrared, and blue wavelengths.
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Ganges River Delta
Ganges River Delta
The tongue of the Malaspina Glacier, the largest glacier in Alaska, fills most of this image. The Malaspina lies west of Yakutat Bay and covers 1,500 square miles (about 3,880 square kilometers). Image taken by Landsat 7 on August 31, 2000.
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ALASKAN SHIMMERThe tongue o...
Alaskan shimmer
The Sierra de Velasco Mountains dominate this image in northern Argentina. The Catamarca province is in the northern part of the image, and the La Rioja province is to the south. The streams are fed by runoff from the snow in the Andes Mountains to the north. These intermittent streams can dry up rapidly. The larger urban area near the bottom of the image is La Rioja, the capital of the province of La Rioja. This image was acquired by the Landsat 5 satellite on February 28, 1985.
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Argentina
Argentina
Phytoplankton bloom off western Iceland; 24 June, 2010. Taken by NASA's Aqua satellite.
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Phytoplankton bloom off wes...
Phytoplankton bloom
​ A spring phytoplankton bloom off of the Alaskan coast.
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Churning in the Chukchi Sea
Churning in the Chukchi Sea
Like distant galaxies amid clouds of interstellar dust, chunks of sea ice drift through graceful swirls of grease ice in the frigid waters of Foxe Basin in the Canadian Arctic.
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Ice Stars
Ice Stars
Earth's city lights as seen from space. The brightest areas of the Earth are the most urbanized, but not necessarily the most populated. More than a century after the invention of the electric light, many parts of the planet remain thinly populated and unlit. Image created with data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Operational Linescan System.
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NIGHT LIGHTS: Earth's city ...
Night lights
This image, showing tidal flats and channels on Long Island, in the Bahamas, was taken by an Expedition 26 crew member onboard the International Space Station. The islands of the Bahamas in the Caribbean Sea are situated on large platforms made mainly from carbonate sediments ringed by fringing reefs — the islands themselves are only the parts of the platform currently exposed above sea level. The sediments are formed mostly from the skeletal remains of organisms settling to the sea floor; over geologic time, these sediments will consolidate to form carbonate sedimentary rocks such as limestone. Darker blue shows deeper water, while light blue-green shows shallow water on the tidal flat. The continually exposed parts of the island are seen in brown, a result of soil formation and vegetation growth (left).
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This image, showing tidal f...
Long Island, Bahamas
This beautiful image, taken on 11 January 2001, shows a geological formation in the Maur Adrar Desert in Mauritania, Africa. Known as the "Richat Structure," this snail-shell-like formation was created when a volcanic dome hardened and gradually eroded, exposing onion-like layers of rock.
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Geologic Delight
Geologic delight
This stunning image of the northwest corner of Australia was snapped by a student on Earth after remotely controlling the Sally Ride EarthKAM aboard the International Space Station.
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Northwest Australia from th...
Northwest Australia from the Space Station
Byrd Glacier, Antarctica, is a 15-mile- (24-kilometer-) wide, 100-mile- (161-kilometer-) long ice stream that plunges through a deep valley in the Transatlantic Mountains and into the Ross Ice Shelf. It moves towards the sea at a rate of about half a mile (0.8 kilometers) per year. This snapshot of the glacier was taken on January 11, 2000.
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Byrd Glacier is a 15-mile- ...
Byrd Glacier

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Images of Change

Images of Change

Explore a stunning gallery of before-and-after images of Earth from land and space that reveal our home planet in a state of flux.
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Climate Time Machine

Climate Time Machine

Travel through Earth's recent climate history and see how increasing carbon dioxide, global temperature and sea ice have changed over time.
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Eyes on the Earth

Eyes on the Earth

Track Earth's vital signs from space and fly along with NASA's Earth-observing satellites in an interactive 3D visualization.
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Global Ice Viewer

Global Ice Viewer

Earth's ice cover is shrinking. See how climate change has affected glaciers, sea ice, and continental ice sheets.
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