Our Planet's Eye in the Sky Finally Closes

Earth Observing-1 wasn’t supposed to survive as long as it did. Operating on a shoestring budget, the spartan satellite outlasted its warranty 15-fold, and changed the way we do space-based imaging of our planet.

The satellite trained its observant lens on the ashes of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It captured the flood that followed in Hurricane Katrina’s wake. It took stock of the devastating tsunami that hit Japan in 2011. It was the first to map active lava flows from space, and the first to track re-growth in the deforested Amazon.

But all things must pass. EO-1 shut down last Thursday, in orbit, some 440 miles above Earth. It was 17.

“I was the first signatory on the decommissioning page, which was a little sad,” says Betsy Middleton, project scientist for at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. “We’re really bummed, but I managed to get two more