Tuesday, 31 March 2026

Fires Tear Through Nebraska Grasslands

February 28, 2026
March 29, 2026
Plains in western Nebraska, divided by the North Platte River, appear in light shades of green and brown in a false-color satellite image.
Plains in western Nebraska, divided by the North Platte River, appear in light shades of green and brown in a false-color satellite image.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin
A burned area on the plains of western Nebraska appears as a large tan area in a false-color satellite image.
A burned area on the plains of western Nebraska appears as a large tan area in a false-color satellite image.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin
Plains in western Nebraska, divided by the North Platte River, appear in light shades of green and brown in a false-color satellite image.
Plains in western Nebraska, divided by the North Platte River, appear in light shades of green and brown in a false-color satellite image.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin
A burned area on the plains of western Nebraska appears as a large tan area in a false-color satellite image.
A burned area on the plains of western Nebraska appears as a large tan area in a false-color satellite image.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin

February 28, 2026

March 29, 2026

Acquired with the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) on the NOAA-21 satellite on February 28 and March 29, 2026, these false-color images (bands M11-I2-I1) show grasslands in western Nebraska before and after several wildland fires spread through the area. NASA Earth Observatory/Lauren Dauphin.

On the afternoon of March 12, 2026, a wildland fire ignited in Morrill County, Nebraska. Within 12 hours, high winds had propelled flames approximately 70 miles (110 kilometers) east-southeast across the prairie. The Morrill fire would burn over 640,000 acres (260,000 hectares) within a week, becoming the largest wildfire in the state’s history.

This image (right) shows the extent of recently burned areas near the North Platte River in western Nebraska on March 29. By this time, authorities reported the Morrill fire was 100 percent contained. However, crews were working to contain two smaller blazes immediately to the northeast, the Ashby and Minor fires, which ignited early on March 26. For comparison, the left image was acquired on February 28, before the fires. Both are false-color to better distinguish the burned areas.

The fires occurred amid an active start for wildfires in the U.S. in 2026. The National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) reported that 15,436 fires had burned 1,510,973 acres nationwide as of March 27. That’s far higher than the 10-year average—9,195 fires burning 664,792 acres—for the same period.

The Great Plains have been particularly prone to fire in early 2026. Exceptionally dry fuels contributed to rapid fire growth and other unusual fire behavior for the time of year, according to the NIFC. Throughout the winter, much of the region saw warmer and windier-than-average conditions, as well as less than 50 percent of average precipitation over a 90-day period, leading to low soil moisture and grass fuels that were primed to burn.

The fires in western Nebraska affected large areas of ranch and pasture lands, destroyed homes, barns, and fences, and injured or killed livestock, according to news reports. The Morrill fire also burned much of the Crescent Lake National Wildlife Refuge in the Nebraska Sandhills, an area of grasslands, wetlands, and dunes used by migratory birds. Despite the fires, reports indicate that hundreds of thousands of sandhill cranes are still making their annual migration through the Platte River valley.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using VIIRS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE, GIBS/Worldview, and the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS). Story by Lindsey Doermann.

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Plains in western Nebraska, divided by the North Platte River, appear in light shades of green and brown in a false-color satellite image.

February 28, 2026

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A burned area on the plains of western Nebraska appears as a large tan area in a false-color satellite image.

March 29, 2026

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Seeing Blue During Schirmacher’s Summer Melt Season

A network of cerulean blue meltwater drainage channels flowing across white and blue ice surfaces. An
Cerulean blue meltwater flows through drainage channels on the Nivlisen Ice Shelf, Antarctica, in this image acquired on January 6, 2026, by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison

Summer is a busy season at Schirmacher Oasis, a rocky, ice-free plateau in Queen Maud Land, East Antarctica. Located near the grounding line of Nivlisen Ice Shelf and about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the open waters of the Lazarev Sea, the “oasis” of land amid an otherwise continuous expanse of ice is home to dozens of small ice-covered freshwater lakes and two research stations.

It’s the season when all-white snow petrels are sometimes spotted soaring over the oasis, and fuzzy south polar skua and Wilson’s storm petrel chicks grow up in sheltered crevices on its cliffs and ridges. Under constant sunlight, the plateau’s freshwater lakes come to life, supporting cyanobacterial growth and teeming with microscopic tardigrades, rotifers, and nematodes. At times, groups of Adélie penguins toddle through the oasis and attempt to breed.

The summer months are also when temperatures creep just above freezing long enough for expansive networks of seasonal melt ponds and drainage channels on and within the surrounding ice to fill with bright blue meltwater that flows north onto and across the Nivlisen Ice Shelf. The satellite image above shows seasonal melt on January 6, 2026, during the peak of the 2026 melt season.  

Schirmacher Oasis appears as a brown rocky plateau dotted with ice-covered lakes surrounded by fields of mostly white ice.
Lakes dot the rocky surface of Schirmacher Oasis in this image acquired on January 6, 2026, by the OLI on Landsat 9.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison

The Nivlisen Ice Shelf is a floating tongue that forms as glacial ice flows off Antarctica and into the waters of the Lazarev Sea. The many blue ice areas found around the oasis are snow-free areas where old, compressed glacial ice with few air bubbles has been exposed by powerful katabatic winds and sublimation. This dense ice absorbs red wavelengths of light and reflects blue wavelengths, making it appear blue. Blue ice areas are rare in Antarctica, covering about 1 percent of the continent’s surface. 

“The image captures the Nivlisen Ice Shelf during a phase of strong, system-wide hydrological connectivity,” said Geetha Priya Murugesan, a remote sensing scientist with the Jyothy Institute of Technology in Bengaluru, India. Such features aren’t always visible in optical satellite imagery, she added, noting that they are often frozen, buried under snow, or drained. “This image is notable because the ‘cerulean veins’ we see on the surface align with a deeper, persistent plumbing system that we monitor with radar.”

Drainage channels filled with blue meltwater zigzag across the white surfaces of Nivlisen Ice Shelf .
Surface drainage channels filled with meltwater flow across the Nivlisen Ice Shelf in this image acquired on January 6, 2026, by the OLI on Landsat 9.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison

Murugesan and colleagues have analyzed decades of satellite data and conducted several years of field research in the area, including in 2026. Their work shows that since 2000, the surface melting caused by seasonal melt ponds and channels on the ice shelf has grown in depth, area, and volume. The depth and volume of melt features grew by a factor of 1.5, while their surface area increased by a factor of 1.2.

Murugesan thinks that the visibility of the drainage network in images like these hints at a deeper vulnerability of the ice shelf. The drainage channels trace preexisting structural weaknesses, including crevasses, that act as “hydraulic pathways” that concentrate meltwater in vulnerable zones near the grounding line, where it can weaken the ice shelf, Murugesan said.

The researchers have also linked peak melting periods like this one to atmospheric rivers and foehn winds that enhance surface melting and help route meltwater through the drainage networks. The dark color—low albedo—of the many blue ice areas surrounding the oasis contributes to drainage events by making ice surfaces less reflective, warmer, and thus more prone to summer melting, Murugesan added.                        

While Murugesan and colleagues are currently conducting a detailed analysis of the 2026 melt season to determine how it compares to past years, she said it appears to be a “strong melt event consistent with elevated melt conditions.”

NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Adam Voiland.

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A network of cerulean blue meltwater drainage channels flowing across white and blue ice surfaces. An

January 6, 2026

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Sendoff for Artemis II Crew

From left to right, NASA astronauts Andre Douglas, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronauts Jenni Gibbons, NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, and CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen pose in front of an airplane. They are all wearing blue jumpsuits with patches and gray harnesses.
NASA/Josh Valcarcel

From left to right, NASA astronauts Andre Douglas, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronauts Jenni Gibbons, NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, and CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen pose for a photo before the Artemis II crew proceed to a media event on March 27, 2026. Douglas and Gibbons are the backup crew members for the mission; they would join the crew if a NASA or CSA astronaut, respectively, is unable to take part in the flight.

Artemis II is NASA’s first crewed mission under the Artemis program and will launch from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It will send Wiseman, Glover, Koch, and Hansen on an approximately 10-day journey around the Moon. Among other objectives, the agency will test the Orion spacecraft’s life support systems for the first time with people and lay the groundwork for future crewed Artemis missions.

Image credit: NASA/Josh Valcarcel



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Saturday, 28 March 2026

NISAR Views Mount St. Helens

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NISAR Views Mount St. Helens

An overhead view of a mountain and the area around it, with unnatural colors added to the radar image. The ground is colored a bright spring green, while the mountain is purple, spreading out like a flower, with a center that's bright fluorescent yellow-green.
PIA26692
Credits:
NASA/JPL-Caltech

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This image captured by U.S.-Indian Earth satellite NISAR on Nov. 10, 2025, shows Washington’s Mount St. Helens. The image is cropped from a much larger swath spanning the Pacific Northwest on a cloudy day; NISAR’s L-band SAR instrument is able to peer through the clouds at the surface below.

In Pacific Northwest imagery from the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar mission, some areas are dotted in magenta due to radar signals strongly reflecting off flat surfaces like roads and buildings, combined with the orientation of those surfaces relative to the satellite’s ground track. The yellow can be produced by a range of different factors, including land cover, moisture, and surface geometry. Yellow-green in the imagery generally indicates vegetation, such as the forests and wetlands covering the region.

Relatively smooth surfaces, including water and — as is most likely the case in this image — vegetation-free clearings on the mountaintop, appear dark blue. Near the foot of the mountain are patches of purple squares cut into the lighter green vegetation. Their precise right angles show that they’re clearly man-made; they’re likely the effect of forests being thinned or possibly vegetation growing back after having been thinned in the past.

A joint mission developed by NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), NISAR launched in July 2025 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre on India’s southeastern coast. Managed by Caltech, JPL leads the U.S. component of the project and provided the satellite’s L-band SAR and antenna reflector. ISRO provided NISAR’s spacecraft bus and its S-band SAR.

The NISAR satellite is the first to carry two SAR instruments at different wavelengths and will monitor Earth’s land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days, collecting data using the spacecraft’s giant drum-shaped reflector, which measures 39 feet (12 meters) wide — the largest radar antenna reflector NASA has ever sent into space.  To learn more about NISAR, visit:

To learn more about NISAR, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/nisar/

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I Am Artemis: Michael Guzman

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I Am Artemis: Michael Guzman

Portrait of Mike Guzman in front of the Launch Control Center at Kennedy Space Center.

Listen to this audio excerpt from Michael Guzman, Artemis II main propulsion systems engineer:

0:00 / 0:00

A clue to what Mike Guzman, main propulsion systems engineer at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, loves most can be found in the signature of his work email: a complex string of equations for rocket thrust, specific impulse, and the physics behind cooling liquid oxygen with helium bubbles.

I'm a huge nerd. I love math, science, and physics. Even in my free time, I'll find myself watching physics lectures.

MiKE Guzman

MiKE Guzman

Artemis II main propulsion systems engineer

Born in New York to a family from the Dominican Republic, Guzman moved to Florida where he earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at Florida International University and a master’s degree in space systems from the Florida Institute of Technology. His path to NASA Kennedy began after being handpicked for a summer internship in 2013, an opportunity that would ultimately change the course of his career.

During his internship, Guzman was inspired to build his own rocket. He purchased a textbook and began building a model rocket in his free time. The drive and passion he put into the project did not go unnoticed. Just three days after the model rocket launched, he was offered a job and has worked for America’s space agency ever since.

Mike Guzman, main propulsion systems engineer, participates in a wet dress rehearsal for the Artemis II mission on Monday, Feb. 2, 2026, inside Firing Room 1 at the Rocco A. Petrone Launch Control Center at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The wet dress rehearsal allows the Artemis II launch team to run through operations to load propellant, conduct a full launch countdown, demonstrate the ability to recycle the countdown clock, and drain the tanks to practice timelines and procedures for launch.
NASA/Kim Shiflett

Guzman began his work with a model rocket, and now, as part of Exploration Ground Systems, is part of the team launching the rocket that will carry astronauts around the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years: the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket for Artemis II.

Guzman joined the propulsion team in 2019. Early in his role, he focused on hydrogen systems at Launch Pad 39B, including the large liquid hydrogen sphere at the pad and the piping that delivers propellant to the rocket. Today, he works on the main propulsion system inside the rocket itself, a role that will put him in the firing room for the Artemis II test flight, at the center of launch operations.

From left, NASA astronauts Bob Hines and Stan Love talk with Mike Guzman, Artemis launch team member, inside Firing Room 1 of the Rocco A. Petrone Launch Control Center during the Artemis II rollout of the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday, March, 20, 2026.
NASA/Amber Jean Notvest

At the heart of Guzman’s work is the “brain book,” a comprehensive binder that contains every drawing, requirement, procedure, and launch commit criteria an engineer might need. It’s a roadmap for efficiency. By studying it in advance, Guzman and his colleagues know exactly where to find what they need and how to respond to unexpected issues.

The key to a successful launch relies on teamwork. On launch day, hundreds of engineers come together in the firing room to monitor every system on the spacecraft. Each console operator’s actions influence the others’, creating a constant interplay where observation, communication, and anticipation are key to mission success.

It has to be a team sport. We’re all sitting in different parts of a whole, that ‘one whole’ being the spacecraft. We all have to work together. We all must have a sense of what the other individuals are doing and what their roles are, because at the end of the day, it’s all interconnected.

MiKE Guzman

MiKE Guzman

Artemis II main propulsion systems engineer

For Guzman, Artemis II represents the culmination of years of preparation, study, and collaboration.

“It’s not something that happens every day, and it’s not something that you get to be a part of every day,” Guzman said. “To see it finally happen, it’s going to be incredible.”

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Gabriella Battenfield

Strategic Communications Intern

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Mar 27, 2026

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Fires Tear Through Nebraska Grasslands

Science Earth Observatory Fires Tear Through Nebraska… Earth Earth Observatory Image of the Day EO Explorer All Topics...