Earth Explorers

Celebrate the Study of Our Planet

For more than 50 years, NASA has offered unique views and knowledge of Earth through the contributions of the hundreds of Earth explorers across the nation who study the complex interactions among the planet’s air, land, water, ice and life.

Earth science offers many exciting career paths in the geosciences and beyond, from agriculture, chemistry, atmospheric science, and engineering to art, education, and journalism. Women@NASA celebrates the contributions of female Earth Explorers by featuring first-hand accounts of women who have advanced the study of Earth through their careers.

Earth Science Week 2015: Visualizing Earth Systems focuses on the importance of scientific visualizations – the representation of data graphically through images, animations and video – to understanding our complex, dynamic Earth system. Visualizations allow us to explore data, patterns, phenomena and behavior, and are particularly effective for showing large scales of time and space, and “invisible” processes (e.g. flows of energy and matter). This process is both science and art.

Celebrate ESW with NASA to learn how visualizations are created and used by scientists. This year’s series of blog posts will take you through some of the tough science questions that are being asked, and how visualizations are helping answer these questions. Learn more at here.

Earth Explorers Profiles

Learn more about how scientists explore the Earth by reading about these fantastic women!  Each picture to the right and link below signifies a scientist who studies the Earth.  Teachers: Use these profiles to enhance your science lessons this year.  We hope you find their stories inspiring, for their work may keep our Blue Marble a beautiful vision in the Universe.

Sarah DeWitt
Jennifer Evans
Dorothy Peteet
Erica Alston
Claire Parkinson
Erika Podest
Cynthia Rosenzweig
Tanya Petach
Lucy McFadden