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By European Space Agency
Thanks to its newly tilted orbit around the Sun, the European Space Agency-led Solar Orbiter spacecraft is the first to image the Sun’s poles from outside the ecliptic plane. Solar Orbiter’s unique viewing angle will change our understanding of the Sun’s magnetic field, the solar cycle and the workings of space weather.
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By NASA
For the first time, scientists can observe temperature changes in the Sun’s outer atmosphere thanks to new technology introduced by NASA’s CODEX instrument. This animated, color-coded heat map shows temperature changes over the course of a couple days, where red indicates hotter regions and purple indicates cooler ones. NASA/KASI/INAF/CODEX Key Points:
NASA’s CODEX investigation captured images of the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, showcasing new aspects of its gusty, uneven flow. The CODEX instrument, located on the International Space Station, is a coronagraph — a scientific tool that creates an artificial eclipse with physical disks — that measures the speed and temperature of solar wind using special filters. These first-of-their-kind measurements will help scientists improve models of space weather and better understand the Sun’s impact on Earth. Scientists analyzing data from NASA’s CODEX (Coronal Diagnostic Experiment) investigation have successfully evaluated the instrument’s first images, revealing the speed and temperature of material flowing out from the Sun. These images, shared at a press event Tuesday at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, illustrate the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, is not a homogenous, steady flow of material, but an area with sputtering gusts of hot plasma. These images will help scientists improve their understanding of how the Sun impacts Earth and our technology in space.
“We really never had the ability to do this kind of science before,” said Jeffrey Newmark, a heliophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the principal investigator for CODEX. “The right kind of filters, the right size instrumentation — all the right things fell into place. These are brand new observations that have never been seen before, and we think there’s a lot of really interesting science to be done with it.”
The Sun continuously radiates material in the form of the solar wind. The Sun’s magnetic field shapes this material, sometimes creating flowing, ray-like formations called coronal streamers. In this view from NASA’s CODEX instrument, large dark spots block much of the bright light from the Sun. Blocking this light allows the instrument’s sensitive equipment to capture the faint light of the Sun’s outer atmosphere. NASA/KASI/INAF/CODEX NASA’s CODEX is a solar coronagraph, an instrument often employed to study the Sun’s faint corona, or outer atmosphere, by blocking the bright face of the Sun. The instrument, which is installed on the International Space Station, creates artificial eclipses using a series of circular pieces of material called occulting disks at the end of a long telescope-like tube. The occulting disks are about the size of a tennis ball and are held in place by three metal arms.
Scientists often use coronagraphs to study visible light from the corona, revealing dynamic features, such as solar storms, that shape the weather in space, potentially impacting Earth and beyond.
NASA missions use coronagraphs to study the Sun in various ways, but that doesn’t mean they all see the same thing. Coronagraphs on the joint NASA-ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) mission look at visible light from the solar corona with both a wide field of view and a smaller one. The CODEX instrument’s field of view is somewhere in the middle, but looks at blue light to understand temperature and speed variations in the background solar wind.
In this composite image of overlapping solar observations, the center and left panels show the field-of-view coverage of the different coronagraphs with overlays and are labeled with observation ranges in solar radii. The third panel shows a zoomed-in, color-coded portion of the larger CODEX image. It highlights the temperature ratios in that portion of the solar corona using CODEX 405.0 and 393.5 nm filters. NASA/ESA/SOHO/KASI/INAF/CODEX “The CODEX instrument is doing something new,” said Newmark. “Previous coronagraph experiments have measured the density of material in the corona, but CODEX is measuring the temperature and speed of material in the slowly varying solar wind flowing out from the Sun.”
These new measurements allow scientists to better characterize the energy at the source of the solar wind.
The CODEX instrument uses four narrow-band filters — two for temperature and two for speed — to capture solar wind data. “By comparing the brightness of the images in each of these filters, we can tell the temperature and speed of the coronal solar wind,” said Newmark.
Understanding the speed and temperature of the solar wind helps scientists build a more accurate picture of the Sun, which is necessary for modeling and predicting the Sun’s behaviors.
“The CODEX instrument will impact space weather modeling by providing constraints for modelers to use in the future,” said Newmark. “We’re excited for what’s to come.”
by NASA Science Editorial Team
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md
CODEX is a collaboration between NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) with additional contribution from Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF).
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Last Updated Jun 10, 2025 Related Terms
Heliophysics Coronagraph Coronal Diagnostic Experiment (CODEX) Goddard Space Flight Center Heliophysics Division Space Weather The Sun The Sun & Solar Physics View the full article
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By NASA
Explore This Section Earth Earth Observer Editor’s Corner Feature Articles Meeting Summaries News Science in the News Calendars In Memoriam Announcements More Archives Conference Schedules Style Guide 9 min read
NASA’s TROPICS Mission: Offering Detailed Images and Analysis of Tropical Cyclones
Introduction
Tropical cyclones represent a danger to life, property, and the economies of communities. Researchers who study tropical cyclones have focused on remote observations using space-based platforms to image these storms, inform forecasts, better predict landfall, and improve understanding of storm dynamics and precipitation evolution – see Figure 1.
Figure 1. TROPICS imagery of Typhoon Kong-rey observed on October 29, 2024 near 205 GHz revealing a large and well-defined eye. Figure credit: U.S. Naval Research Laboratory The tropical cyclone community has leveraged data from Earth observing platforms for more than 30 years. These data have been retrieved from numerous instruments including: the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)–Series R satellites; the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Microwave Imager (TMI); the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Microwave Imager (GMI); the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS) on the Defense Meteorological Satellite (DSMP) satellites; the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) on Aqua; AMSR2 on the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Global Change Observation Mission–Water (GCOM-W) mission; the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) on Aqua and the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) on the NASA–NOAA Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP), NOAA-20, and NOAA-21; the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra and Aqua Platform; and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on Suomi NPP, as well as on the first two Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) missions (i.e., NOAA-20 and NOAA-21).
Despite having decades of data at their disposal, scientists lack data from instruments placed in low-inclination orbits that provide more frequent views within tropical regions. This limitation is especially pronounced in the tropical and subtropical latitudes, which is where tropical storms develop and intensify.
The NASA Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats (TROPICS) grew from the Precipitation and All-weather Temperature and Humidity (PATH) to address a need for obtaining three-dimensional (3D) temperature and humidity measurements as well as precipitation with a temporal revisit rate of one hour or better – see Figure 2. TROPICS uses multiple small satellites flying in a carefully engineered formation to obtain rapid revisits of measurements of precipitation structure within the storms, as well as temperature and humidity profiles, both within and outside of the storms, including the intensity of the upper-level warm core. In addition, the instruments provide a median revisit time of about one hour. The data gathered also informs changes in storm track and intensity and provides data to improve weather prediction models.
The imagery is focused on inner storm structure (near 91 and 205 GHz), temperature soundings (near 118 GHz), and moisture soundings (near 183 GHz). Spatial resolution at nadir is approximately 24 km (16.8 mi) for temperature and 17 km (10.6 mi) for moisture and precipitation, covering a swath of approximately 2000 km (1243 mi) in width. Researchers can use TROPICS data to create hundreds of high-resolution images of tropical cyclones throughout their lifecycle.
Figure 2. TROPICS space vehicle showing the CubeSat bus, radiometer payload, and deployed articulated solar array. Figure credit: Blue Canyon Technologies and MIT Lincoln Laboratory This article provides an overview of the two years of successful science operations of TROPICS, with a focus on the suite of geophysical Level-2 (L2) products (e.g., atmospheric vertical temperature and moisture profiles, instantaneous surface rain rate, and tropical cyclone intensity) and the science investigations resulting from these measurements. The complete article, available in the Proceedings Of The IEEE: Special Issue On Satellite Remote Sensing Of The Earth, provides more comprehensive details of the results.
From Pathfinder to Constellation
A single TROPICS satellite was launched as a Pathfinder vehicle on June 30, 2021, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare into a Sun-synchronous polar orbit. TROPICS was originally conceived as a six-satellite constellation, with two satellites launched into each of three low-inclination orbits. Regrettably, the first launch, on June 22, 2022 aboard an Astra Rocket 3.3, failed to reach orbit. While unfortunate, the mission could still proceed with four satellites and meet its baseline revisit rate requirement (with no margin), with the silver lining of an extra year of data gathered from TROPICS Pathfinder that allowed the tropical cyclone research community to prepare and test communications systems and data processing algorithms before the launch of the four remaining constellation satellites. These satellites were deployed on two separate launches – May 8, 2023 and May 26, 2023 aboard a Rocket Lab launch vehicle. The early testing accelerated calibration and validation for the constellation.
Collecting Data Critical to Understanding Tropical Cyclones
Tropical cyclone investigations require rapid quantitative observations to create 2D storm structure information. The four radiance data products in the TROPICS constellation [i.e., antenna temperature (L1a), brightness temperature (L1b), unified brightness temperature, and regularized scan pattern and limb-adjusted brightness temperature (L1c)] penetrate below the cloud top to gather data at greater frequency for a lower cost than current operational systems. The constellation data has been used to evaluate the development of the warm core and evolution of the ice water path within storms – two indicators of storm formation and subsequent changes in intensity.
The upper-level warm core is key to tropical cyclone development and intensification. Precipitation may instigate rapid intensification through convective bursts that are characterized by expanding cold cloud tops, increasing ice scattering, lightning, and towers of intense rain and ice water that are indicative of strong updrafts. TROPICS frequencies provide a wealth of information on scattering by precipitation-sized ice particles in the eyewall and rainbands that will allow for researchers to track the macrostructure of convective bursts in tropical cyclones across the globe. In addition, TROPICS data helps clarify how variations in environmental humidity around tropical cyclones affect storm structure and intensification.
Upper-level Warm Core
Analysis of the upper-level warm core of a tropical cyclone reveals valuable information about the storm’s development. The tropical cyclone community is using data from TROPICS to understand the processes that lead to precipitating ice structure and the role it plays in intensification – see Figure 3. While the warm core has been studied for decades, TROPICS provides a new opportunity to get high-revisit rate estimates of the atmospheric vertical temperature profile. By pairing the temperature profile with the atmospheric vertical moisture profile, researchers can define the relative humidity in the lower-to-middle troposphere, which is critical to understanding the impact of dry environmental air on storm evolution and structure.
Figure 3. TROPICS-3 imagery of Typhoon Kong-rey observed on October 29, 2024, a Category-5 storm that formed in the Pacific Ocean basin. Data gathered near 118 GHz was used to characterize temperature while data gathered near 205 GHz [right] revealed more about the inner structure of the storm. These data are used to define the warm core of the well-defined eye, located at 18.5° N. Figure Credit: U.S. Naval Research Laboratory Ice Water Path and Precipitation
Another variable that helps to provide insight into the development of tropical cyclones is the ice water path, which details the total mass of ice present in a vertical column of the atmosphere and is therefore useful for characterizing the structure and intensity of these storms. Increasing ice water path can reflect strengthening convection within a storm and thereby be an indicator of likely intensification – see Figure 4. TROPICS is the first spaceborne sensor equipped with a 205-GHz channel that, along with the traditional 89, 118, and 183 GHz channels, is more sensitive to detecting precipitation-sized ice particles. In addition, the TROPICS Precipitation Retrieval and Profiling Scheme (PRPS) provides an estimate of precipitation. This scheme is based solely on the satellite radiances linked to precipitation rates, which can be used to generate products across time scales, from near-real-time to climatological scales.
Figure 4. Global precipitation ice water path (PIWP) retrievals derived from TROPICS [top] compared to those derived using data from the GPM Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar (GPM DPR) [bottom] The strong agreement between the two datasets is further validated through case studies over hurricanes, where TROPICS observations correspond well with known storm characteristics. Figure Credit: Blackwell, W. J. et al. (2025) Collaborations and TROPICS Data in Action
To evaluate and enhance the data gathered by TROPICS, the TROPICS application team enlisted the assistance of operational weather forecasters that formed the TROPICS Early Adopters program. In 2018, the program connected the application team to stakeholders interested in using TROPICS data for research, forecasting, and decision making. This collaboration improved approaches to diagnose and predict tropical cyclones. For example, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) found that the new TROPICS channel at 204.8 GHz offered the best approach to capture convective storm structure, followed by the more traditionally used 91-GHz channel. In addition, the U.S. Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) has been using TROPICS data to center-fix tropical cyclones and identify cloud formations. In particular, the JTWC team found that the 91-GHz channel was most useful for identifying cloud structure. Both NHC and JTWC found the TROPICS high revisit rate to be beneficial.
In 2024, the TROPICS applications team developed the TROPICS Satellite Validation Module as part of the NOAA Hurricane Research Division’s annual Advancing the Prediction of Hurricanes Experiment (APHEX). The module coordinated data collection from NOAA’s Hurricane Hunter aircraft beneath TROPICS satellite overpasses to provide data to calibrate and validate TROPICS temperature, moisture, and precipitation measurements. Using this approach, the Hurricane Hunter team tracked Hurricane Ernesto over the central North Atlantic on August 15 and 16, 2024 and used the data to characterize the environment of Ernesto’s rain bands – see Figure 5.
Figure 5. Brightness temperature (K) measured at 205 GHz from TROPICS-5 [right] and TROPICS-6 [left and center] from Hurricane Ernesto on August 15 and 16, 2024. The shaded circles denote 850–700 hPa relative humidity (%). Wind barbs are 850–700 hPa layer averaged winds (kt). Dropsonde data within 30 minutes of the TROPICS overpass times are plotted. Figure Credit: Blackwell, W. J. et al. (2025) In addition, the team used TROPICS observations in combination with GPM constellation precipitation estimates to characterize the lifecycle of Hurricane Franklin, which formed on August 19, 2023 and underwent a period of rapid intensification about eight days later. Intensification of the storm, in particular the period of rapid intensification (45 knot increase in maximum winds in 24 hours), occurred in association with a decrease in environmental vertical wind shear, a contraction of the radius of maximum precipitation, and an increase in the precipitation rate. Intensification ended with the formation of secondary rainbands and an outward shift in the radius of maximum precipitation.
Conclusion
TROPICS data offer the potential for improving forecasts from numerical weather prediction models and operational forecasts using its high spatial resolution and high revisit rates that enable enhanced characterization of tropical cyclones globally. To date, the TROPICS mission has produced a high-quality aggregate data record spanning 10 billion observations and 10 satellite years, using relatively low-cost microwave sounder constellations. All L1 (i.e., radiances) and L2 (i.e., geophysical products) data products and Algorithm Theoretical Basis Documents are available to the general public through the Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC). The GES DISC data discussed in this article include L1 and L2 products for TROPICS-1, TROPICS-3, TROPICS-5, and TROPICS-6.
TROPICS data has aided hurricane track forecasting for multiple storms as forecasters have used the data at multiple operational tropical cyclone forecast centers. Data gathered by TROPICS will soon be complemented by multiple commercial constellations that are coming online to improve the revisit rate and performance.
William Blackwell
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
wjb@ll.mit.edu
Scott Braun
NASA GSFC, TROPICS Project Scientist
scott.a.braun@nasa.gov
Stacy Kish
Earth Observer Staff
Earthspin.science@gmail.com
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Last Updated Jun 09, 2025 Related Terms
Earth Science View the full article
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By NASA
Arsia Mons, an ancient Martian volcano, was captured before dawn on May 2, 2025, by NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter while the spacecraft was studying the Red Planet’s atmosphere, which appears here as a greenish haze.NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU The 2001 Odyssey spacecraft captured a first-of-its-kind look at Arsia Mons, which dwarfs Earth’s tallest volcanoes.
A new panorama from NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter shows one of the Red Planet’s biggest volcanoes, Arsia Mons, poking through a canopy of clouds just before dawn. Arsia Mons and two other volcanoes form what is known as the Tharsis Montes, or Tharsis Mountains, which are often surrounded by water ice clouds (as opposed to Mars’ equally common carbon dioxide clouds), especially in the early morning. This panorama marks the first time one of the volcanoes has been imaged on the planet’s horizon, offering the same perspective of Mars that astronauts have of the Earth when they peer down from the International Space Station.
Launched in 2001, Odyssey is the longest-running mission orbiting another planet, and this new panorama represents the kind of science the orbiter began pursuing in 2023, when it captured the first of its now four high-altitude images of the Martian horizon. To get them, the spacecraft rotates 90 degrees while in orbit so that its camera, built to study the Martian surface, can snap the image.
Arsia Mons is the southernmost of the three volcanoes that make up Tharsis Montes, shown in the center of this cropped topographic map of Mars. Olympus Mons, the solar system’s largest volcano, is at upper left. The western end of Valles Marineris begins cutting its wide swath across the planet at lower right.NASA/JPL-Caltech The angle allows scientists to see dust and water ice cloud layers, while the series of images enables them to observe changes over the course of seasons.
“We’re seeing some really significant seasonal differences in these horizon images,” said planetary scientist Michael D. Smith of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It’s giving us new clues to how Mars’ atmosphere evolves over time.”
Understanding Mars’ clouds is particularly important for understanding the planet’s weather and how phenomena like dust storms occur. That information, in turn, can benefit future missions, including entry, descent and landing operations.
Volcanic Giants
While these images focus on the upper atmosphere, the Odyssey team has tried to include interesting surface features in them, as well. In Odyssey’s latest horizon image, captured on May 2, Arsia Mons stands 12 miles (20 kilometers) high, roughly twice as tall as Earth’s largest volcano, Mauna Loa, which rises 6 miles (9 kilometers) above the seafloor.
The southernmost of the Tharsis volcanoes, Arsia Mons is the cloudiest of the three. The clouds form when air expands as it blows up the sides of the mountain and then rapidly cools. They are especially thick when Mars is farthest from the Sun, a period called aphelion. The band of clouds that forms across the planet’s equator at this time of year is called the aphelion cloud belt, and it’s on proud display in Odyssey’s new panorama.
“We picked Arsia Mons hoping we would see the summit poke above the early morning clouds. And it didn’t disappoint,” said Jonathon Hill of Arizona State University in Tempe, operations lead for Odyssey’s camera, called the Thermal Emission Imaging System, or THEMIS.
The THEMIS camera can view Mars in both visible and infrared light. The latter allows scientists to identify areas of the subsurface that contain water ice, which could be used by the first astronauts to land on Mars. The camera can also image Mars’ tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, allowing scientists to analyze their surface composition.
More About Odyssey
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Odyssey Project for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the spacecraft and collaborates with JPL on mission operations. THEMIS was built and is operated by Arizona State University in Tempe.
For more about Odyssey:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/odyssey/
News Media Contacts
Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
2025-077
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Last Updated Jun 06, 2025 Related Terms
Mars Odyssey Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars Explore More
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