Just for fun: NASA Earth mission

Many people think NASA exclusively points its telescopes at the sky. In fact, NASA has an important Earth-studying mission as well. For example, NASA satellites are instrumental in detecting and studying hurricanes. Here's a recent example:

Caption: GOES-13 image of Tropical Storm Richard at 1732 UTC (1:32 p.m. EDT) on Oct. 22 showing Richard's clouds over the Honduras/Nicaragua border as it heads toward Belize.

Credit: NOAA/NASA GOES Project

Much of our climate change data also comes from NASA satellites, which measure everything from temperature, to greenhouse gases to rainfall. A new suite of these satellites is pictured below:

Artist's Concept of the A-Train constellation of satellites. Credit: NASA