There are many great Earth-observing satellites circling the planet these days. Digital Globe's new WorldView 3 has incredible 30-centimeter resolution, and Planet Lab's flock of minisatellites may someday soon be able to image every spot on Earth, every single day. But taken together, NASA has by far the best collection of satellites designed to monitor the planet.
Two recent additions to NASA's fleet are star performers: Landsat 8, the latest in a mission to continuously monitor the Earth's surface for more than four decades; and Suomi NPP, which has unprecedented capabilities including incredible nighttime sensing. Astronauts on the International Space Station are also capturing some great shots of Earth, and veteran satellites like Aqua and Terra continue to return top-quality data and awesome images.
Here are some of our favorite shots that NASA's satellites captured of Earth this year, including shots of a volcano erupting on a newly born island, tornado tracks across the Great Plains, the aurora borealis above Russia and dust from the Sahara spreading across the globe. Many thanks to the super team at NASA's Earth Observatory that finds, processes and researches hundreds of images each year, plucking beautiful scenes out of the incredible amounts of data collected by the satellite fleet, sometimes doing it all in just hours to capture a timely event.
