This image of the Mississippi Delta was obtained on February 24 and is one of the first scenes acquired by the Moderate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on Terra. It covers an area of 100km by 100km over New Orleans, Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico. Some features clearly visible on the image are the classic bird's foot shape of the Mississippi River's channels in the delta, sediment plumes around the delta and between the barrier islands north of it and differences in ocean color between the shallow bays behind the barrier islands and the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Photo: NASA

After eleven weeks of on-orbit checkout and verification and a series of orbital ascent maneuvers, the Terra Spacecraft reached its final orbit on February 23rd. This event was a culmination of years of work for the Terra team with the acquisition Terra's first engineering images. Terra's spacecraft subsystems continue to perform flawlessly, with almost all systems now in their operational science mode. Terra's ground system is providing excellent support for spacecraft command and control, and is performing nominally for the capture and processing of Terra data.

"We're very excited to see the first engineering images from Terra," said Dr. Yoram Kaufman, Terra Project Scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. "They show that the Terra instruments, with their delicate optics and electronics made it safely to space. The images give us a glimpse on the unprecedented clarity and richness of the data that we anticipate from Terra in the months and years to come. With these data Terra starts a revolution in Earth Sciences, by observing simultaneously many of the processes in land, ocean and atmosphere that form the Earth System in which we live."

"Terra's final ascent maneuvers were successfully performed," said Kevin Grady, Terra project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "Terra is now flying on the World Reference System (WRS), on the same ground track as Landsat 7. Following the initial orbit raising attempt the Terra team developed a revised plan with eight maneuvers required to raise Terra's orbit. Each maneuver was performed as planned.

"This performance demonstrates the quality and commitment of the entire Terra Operations Team. Everyone involved deserves congratulations for the successful ascent of Terra to its operational orbit," Grady added.

This image is a color composite covering the Rift Valley inland area of Ethiopia. The color difference of this image reflects the distribution of different rocks with different amounts of silicon dioxide. It is inferred that the area with whitish color is covered with basalt and the pinkish area in the center contains andesite. This is the first spaceborne, multi-band TIR image in history that enables geologists to distinguish between rocks with similar compositions. Photo: NASA

On February 24, the Moderate-resolution, Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) opened the Earth view door during a pass over eastern North America. The acquisition of science data on-board proceeded nominally, and the initial MODIS measurements were successfully downlinked and captured on the ground. The initial image produced by the MODIS Team was a spectacular color image of eastern North America, extending from Canada down through Mexico.

"A 'first light,' engineering quality, swath of MODIS data over eastern North America reveals that the instrument is working quite well," said Dr. Vince Solomonson, principal investigator for the MODIS instrument. "These data corroborate that MODIS will provide global, daily, multispectral simultaneous observations of land, ocean, and atmospheric features that will improve substantially our understanding of how the Earth works as a system. Unprecedented views of ocean fluorescence, the intensity of fires over land and eruptions of volcanoes, and properties of clouds (e.g, the extent of cirrus clouds) will be forthcoming. MODIS is designed to play a significant role as the Terra mission provides a comprehensive assessment of the state of the planet Earth."

Later that morning, the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) Team opened their instrument cover over central Canada. Again all operations proceeded as planned. Shortly thereafter, the MISR Team produced a spectacular image over Ontario, Canada.

"These first pictures illustrate many of MISR's new and unique capabilities," said MISR principal investigator, Dr. David J. Diner of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "The instrument, operations system, and science data processing software are performing extremely well and the quality of the images, particularly at the very challenging oblique angles, is outstanding."

As the week was ending, the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) Team had just completed opening the contamination cover on the CERES aft and fore instrument. Once again, the activation of the cover was nominal. Later in the day, the instruments were configured in the normal mission mode, with one sensor in crosstrack mode, and one in the biaxial mode.

Emitted longwave flux from February 26. The image shows the energy being lost from the Earth and the atmosphere by thermal emission. This process, familiar to most of us as the heat radiated by electric stove elements, involves light with wavelengths invisible to the eye. Blue values come from cold scenes with low thermal emission, while red values come from hot ones with high emission. As we might expect, the colder regions near the poles are blue, while the much warmer tropics are red. Near the center of the image, in red, we can see the Saudi Peninsula standing in contrast with the warm waters of the Indian Ocean, which appear a lighter shade. The land is hotter than the ocean, as we might expect from having the Sun shining on the Earth under clear skies at about 10:45 a.m. local time. Photo: NASA

"Both instruments are on and appear to be working very well," said Dr. Bruce Barkstrom, Principal Investigator for the CERES Instrument. "In normal operation one instrument will scan perpendicular to the Terra ground track, in order to spatially sample the Earth. The other instrument samples the angular distribution of radiation. These two Terra instruments join a previous CERES scanner on the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), which was launched on November 27, 1997. They complement TRMM by extending the observations to cover the globe and by improving sampling of the large diurnal cycle of radiation."

The Advanced spaceborne thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) completed imaging over Japan on February 24.

The week of February 27, the Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT) instrument doors were opened. Later that week, MOPITT's coolers were commanded on and they began collecting science data.

After a little over two months on-orbit, Terra is beginning to produce spectacular imagery. Operationally, Terra will produce 6 terabytes (6 trillion bytes) of data every month, all of which will be available to users for many purposes including science research, applications, and education. The first release of Terra Science imagery is expected for mid-April 2000.