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With one glance at a particular 12-mile stretch of Lake Huron’s shoreline, it’s clear there’s a pattern. Small islands outlined by tan beaches and bright, shallow water align in a remarkably parallel orientation. The claw-mark-like appearance of this Great Lakes locale is evident in this image, acquired with the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on the NASA-USGS Landsat 9 satellite in July 2026.

The Les Cheneaux Islands are a group of 36 islands near the shore of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northeast of the Straits of Mackinac. The archipelago contains coastal marshes, rock and sand beaches, peat bogs, and forests full of pine and cedar. Parts of several islands are set aside as nature preserves, including a substantial portion of Marquette Island, which is only accessible by boat or over ice. The islands are interspersed with sheltered waters that inspired their name; the French “Les Cheneaux” roughly translates to “the channels.”

The Les Cheneaux Islands, like many landforms in the Great Lakes region, look the way they do because of glaciers that carved the landscape during the Wisconsin Ice Age before retreating around 10,000 years ago. Their elongated shapes indicate many of them are drumlins: mounds of glacial debris that run parallel to the direction of the ice’s movement. 

The glacial topography has helped give rise to a distinct local maritime culture. In contrast with the Great Lakes’ vast open expanses, the waters around the Les Cheneaux Islands are relatively protected from the infamous storms that can otherwise roil the upper Midwest lakes. This creates opportunities for paddling, as well as fishing in quiet alcoves for species such as smallmouth bass, northern pike, yellow perch, and lake trout. The town of Cedarville boasts an annual antique wooden boat show, a boat-building school, and museums highlighting how people, from the area’s earliest inhabitants to today’s residents, have used the islands and waterways.

On land, the much older geology of the area is revealed in a couple of brightly colored quarries. The bedrock here is dolomite, a modified form of limestone. It was deposited in the Silurian period more than 400 million years ago in a shallow, tropical sea before the movement of tectonic plates brought it up north. Michigan is home to several large dolomite and limestone mines, and Port Dolomite, east of Cedarville, ships millions of tons of the material every year.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Lindsey Doermann.

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July 23, 2026

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References & Resources

• Aldo Leopold Festival (2021) Les Cheneaux Geology Tour. Accessed August 20, 2026.
• Les Cheneaux Historical Association (2026) Welcome to The Les Cheneaux Historical Association. Accessed August 20, 2026.
• Les Cheneaux Islands Chamber of Commerce (2026) Visitor Information. Accessed August 20, 2026.
• National Park Service (2018, February 22) Drumlins. Accessed August 20, 2026.
• Schaetzl, R., Sedimentary Rock Sequence in the Michigan Basin. Accessed August 20, 2026.

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NASA astronaut Adam Fuhrmann (right, in yellow) prepares for a training flight aboard NASA’s WB-57 aircraft in this July 16, 2026, photo.

These high-altitude flights train the crew to work in a tight environment and operate aircraft systems while in a pressure suit, preparing them for future missions to the International Space Station, Moon, or beyond.

Image credit: NASA/Josh Valcarcel

Source: www.nasa.gov

Delegates to the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Three of the 56 delegates who signed the formal break from Britain represented New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, Matthew Thornton and William Whipple.

Source: www.war.gov

Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson was a Founding Father who drafted the Declaration of Independence and who doubled the size of the country with the Louisiana Purchase while serving as the third president.

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Crew chiefs assigned to the Air National Guard’s 171st Air Refueling Wing, based near Pittsburgh, keep two aerial refueling flying squadrons of KC-135 Stratotanker refueling tanker aircraft mission ready.

Source: www.war.gov

AUGUST 24

AUGUST 23

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AUGUST 24

AUGUST 23

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An iceberg from Petermann Glacier encounters Joe Island in northwestern Greenland, visible in images captured by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9 on August 23, 2026 (right), and August 24, 2026 (left). NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin.

Summer is prime iceberg season in Greenland’s glacier-fed fjords, and 2026 was no exception. Especially notable was the berg that broke from the Petermann Glacier along Greenland’s northwest coast in August. Roughly the size of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, it was the largest calving event by any Arctic glacier since 2020.

Iceberg calving is a routine part of an outlet glacier’s life cycle. Scientists watch the process closely, however, along with numerous other observations of the ice and its environment, for longer-term signs of instability. Petermann is one of Greenland’s largest marine-terminating glaciers and acts as a gatekeeper for ice flowing from the ice sheet into the ocean. Its future stability has implications for sea level rise.

The calving event of summer 2026 was spotted on August 4 by Adam Garbo, a doctoral student in glaciology at the University of Ottawa, in imagery from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 mission. Garbo and an international team of colleagues have been using remote sensing to study and track the glacier’s ice tongue.

The team reported that the large tabular iceberg, or “ice island,” measured just over 76 square kilometers (29 square miles) at the time it calved—the largest to break from the glacier since the ice island of 2012 (130 square kilometers). The 2012 calving followed earlier major events in 2008 (31 square kilometers) and 2010 (just over 250 square kilometers).

The August 2026 event could have been even bigger. Garbo and colleagues had been expecting a major calving once one of the large rifts they were monitoring finally cut all the way across Petermann’s ice tongue. “What surprised us was that the calving instead followed a different fracture, producing a smaller ice island than we had originally anticipated,” Garbo said. As of late August, two large rifts remained and were expected to eventually produce new ice islands of roughly 94 square kilometers and 84 square kilometers, though the timing remained uncertain.

Glaciologist Mauri Pelto of Nichols College has also been tracking the iceberg, using images from NASA-USGS Landsat satellites, as it drifted down Petermann Fjord toward Nares Strait. In the week since it calved, the berg drifted an average of 3 kilometers per day. It continued toward the fjord’s junction with Nares Strait, where it rammed into a small rocky outcrop known as Joe Island (Joe Ø). The brief encounter is visible in images captured by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9 on August 23 (top right) and August 24 (top left). A detailed view of the August 24 image is shown above.

Joe Island sits at the mouth of Petermann Fjord, making it one of the first obstacles a departing ice island meets. Collisions with it—like the one that split the 2010 ice island in two—often mark the start of a berg’s breakup. Petermann bergs tend to be thinner and more fragile than those calved by glaciers such as Greenland’s Jakobshavn and Helheim, and thinner still than Antarctica’s behemoths, Pelto noted.

“We were certainly watching closely as it interacted with Joe Island and were impressed that it survived the interaction without further fragmentation,” Garbo said.

The ice island was estimated to be less than 150 meters thick at the time of calving. Wind and surface currents have swept it out of the fjord, and satellite images show it pivoting away from Joe Island and continuing southwest through Nares Strait. As it drifts, it will fracture into smaller pieces as tides, winds, currents, and melting continue to weaken the ice.

Thicker bergs that calve from tidewater glaciers without floating ice-shelf extensions can drag and even become grounded on the seafloor within the fjord, while ice islands, like those from Petermann, might run aground later in their drift. Many ice islands have become “grounded” off the coasts of Coburg and Baffin islands.

Garbo and colleagues noted that ice islands and their fragments have been known to travel considerable distances, posing potential hazards to marine activities and infrastructure while also distributing freshwater through the ocean as they melt.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Kathryn Hansen.

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August 23, 2026

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August 24, 2026

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References & Resources

• Åkesson, H., et al. (2022) Petermann ice shelf may not recover after a future breakup. Nature Communications, 13(2519).
• Crawford, A. J., et al. (2016) Journey of an Arctic Ice Island. Oceanography, 29(2), 254–263.
• Eos (2011, April 5) Context for the Recent Massive Petermann Glacier Calving Event. Accessed August 28, 2026.
• The European Space Agency (2026, August 21) Sentinel-1 captures major ice loss from Greenland glacier. Accessed August 28, 2026.
• Fahrner, D., et al. (2026) Petermann Glacier on the brink: Progress, challenges and insights. Science Advances, 12(33).
• From a Glaciers Perspective (2026, August 17) Petermann Glacier, NW Greenland Releases Massive Iceberg in August 2026. Accessed August 28, 2026.
• NASA Earth Observatory (2023, May 20) Retreat at Petermann Glacier. Accessed August 28, 2026.
• NASA Earth Observatory (2012, August 2) Ice Island Drifts away from Petermann Glacier. Accessed August 28, 2026.
• NASA Earth Observatory (2010, August 10) Ice Island calves off Petermann Glacier. Accessed August 28, 2026.
• uOttawa (2026, August 7) Greenland glacier break creates new ice island. Accessed August 28, 2026.

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Every month, NASA Earth Observatory features a puzzling satellite image. The September 2026 puzzler appears above. 

Your Challenge
Identify the location shown in this satellite image. Share what clues you see, where you think it is, and what makes this place interesting or unique to you.

How to Answer
Submit your response using this form and select “Puzzler Answer” as the topic. Please include your preferred name or alias.

You can keep it simple and just guess the location. Want to impress us? Tell us which satellite and instrument captured the image, which spectral bands were used, or point out a subtle detail about the geology or history of the area. If something catches your eye, or if this is your home or means something to you, we’d love to hear about it.

The Prize
We can’t offer prize money or a trip to space to see Earth like satellites and astronauts do. But we can offer something almost as rewarding: puzzler bragging rights.

About a week after the challenge, we’ll post the answer at the top of this page, along with a link to an Earth Observatory Image of the Day story that explains the image in more detail. We’ll recognize the first person who correctly guesses the location, and we may also highlight readers who share especially thoughtful or interesting answers. By submitting a response, you acknowledge that your comments may be edited, excerpted, and published on this page.

Until then, zoom in, look closely, and enjoy the challenge. See you at the reveal!

Source: science.nasa.gov

Among the 63 U.S. national parks, few are as defined by a single river’s floodplain as Congaree National Park in South Carolina. While the features are also prominent in other parks, a full 80 percent of Congaree National Park lies within the Congaree River floodplain.

It’s a place home to one of the largest intact tracts of old-growth bottomland hardwood forests in the United States. In this image captured by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9, the river winds through the forested plain, along with curving bands of green that trace old channels, ridges, and swales left behind as the river gradually migrated across it. Slight differences in elevation in these paleochannels and other landforms affect how frequently they flood, producing distinct ecosystems that appear in contrasting shades of green.

The river flows through flat, soft terrain, which encourages the formation of bends and meanders. Water typically flows faster on the outside of bends, leading to more rapid erosion as the channel carves into the outer riverbank. It moves more slowly on the inside of bends, resulting in the deposition of sediment and the growth of sandy features called point bars. Over time, this process can cut off a bend from the main river channel, forming U-shaped oxbow lakes.

The National Park Service lists Weston Lake, 1.2 miles (1.9 kilometers) from the visitor center, as one of the park’s most permanent oxbow lakes, noting that it is relatively deep and lacks the shallow clay and silt layer found in most of the park’s other oxbow lakes, such as Devil’s Elbow. On the right side of the image is Bates Old River, a roughly 4-mile-long abandoned channel of the Congaree River and one of the longest oxbow lakes in South Carolina. Over time, abandoned channels and oxbow lakes can fill with sediment and become shallow wetlands. Some of these low-lying, water-filled features are known as sloughs, where flood-tolerant cypress-tupelo forests tend to grow.

While loggers targeted forests along the Congaree in the 1880s, challenges such as frequent flooding, interminably muddy roads, and mosquito-plagued conditions meant that most of the floodplain forests escaped the widespread logging that transformed other parts of the Southeast. By the 1950s, conservationists had begun to recognize how rare old-growth forests of this type had become in the region. Congress designated the area a national monument in 1976, and it became a national park in 2003.

As the river snakes its way through the park’s mostly flat terrain, it overflows its banks several times per year, usually in the winter and early spring but also in the summer and fall after hurricanes and major rainstorms. These floods distribute broad layers of nutrient-rich silt throughout the floodplain, nourishing the forests and contributing to the high concentration of unusually large trees in the park.

Over the decades, Congaree National Park has harbored a remarkable array of giant “champion” trees that have held national and state size records for their species. Though individual trees have gained and lost champion status as they have been damaged, have died, or been surpassed by newly measured trees elsewhere, Congaree trees such as the possumhaw (Ilex decidua), water hickory (Carya aquatica), loblolly pine (Pinus taeda), laurel oak (Quercus laurifolia), swamp tupelo (Nyssa biflora), and sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) have held records at times.

During this National Park Week, celebrate by exploring Earth Observatory’s U.S. National Parks from Space collection. You can also check out the offerings of Earth to Sky, a collaborative program that connects NASA science with park service rangers across the nation.   

NASA Earth Observatory image by Michala Garrison, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Adam Voiland.

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August 18, 2025

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References & Resources

• American Forests (2009) Congaree: Where The Trees Are Still Tall. Accessed August 27, 2026.
• Atlas Obscura (2025, May 12) How One Biologist Drew a Hyper-Accurate, Ranger-Approved Map of Congaree National Park. Accessed August 27, 2026.
• Discover South Carolina, Champion Trees are Star Attraction at Congaree National Park. Accessed August 27, 2026.
• National Parks Conservation Association (2024, March 27) Congaree: ‘Champion’ Trees, Synchronous Fireflies and More. Accessed August 27, 2026.  
• National Parks Conservation Association (2017) The Wild Congaree. Accessed August 27, 2026.  
• National Park Maps, Congaree Forest Map. Accessed August 27, 2026.  
• National Park Service, Last Stand for Floodplain Forests. Accessed August 27, 2026.
• National Park Service, Congaree National Park. Accessed August 27, 2026.  
• National Park Service (2014) Congaree National Park: Geologic Resources Inventory Report. Accessed August 27, 2026.
• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Bottomland Hardwoods. Accessed August 27, 2026.
• U.S. Geological Survey Ecology of Congaree National Park. Accessed August 27, 2026.

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August 6, 2026

August 14, 2026

August 6, 2026August 14, 2026

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August 14, 2026

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Part of northern Chile transforms from bare to snow-covered in these images captured before and after winter storms in August 2026 by the NASA-USGS Landsat 8 and Landsat 9 satellites. NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin.

In August 2026, back-to-back winter storms left parts of the Atacama Desert in northern Chile covered in a rare blanket of snow. The typically arid region has seen snowfall before, notably in 2025 and before that in 2011. But one of the 2026 events was unusually widespread, stretching from the Andes to near the Pacific coast.

The OLI (Operational Land Imager) on the NASA-USGS Landsat 8 and Landsat 9 satellites captured these images (above) on August 6 and August 14, before and after a period of severe weather, respectively. They show a detailed view of the Chajnantor plateau within the Altiplano-Puna volcanic complex, home to the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)—one of the planet’s most powerful radio telescopes. As snow and high winds set in, ALMA suspended operations, moving its antennas into a protective survival mode.

Another storm in the second half of the month blanketed an even wider area with fresh snowfall. This image, captured by the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Terra satellite on August 19, shows snow extending westward from the Andes, across the desert’s hyper-arid core, and close to the Pacific coast south of the Chilean port city of Antofagasta. This coastal area is home to several other major astronomical observatories, some of which also suspended operations during the event.

Most of the region’s winter precipitation comes from cutoff lows—low-pressure systems that become cut off from the jet stream and can occasionally reach northern Chile. That’s what happened in 2025, said René Garreaud, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Chile. The late-August 2026 storm also came from a cutoff low, but this one spun off from an unusually large trough—an elongated area of relatively low atmospheric pressure—that spanned an enormous stretch of the hemisphere, from the tip of South America up into the subtropics.

The atmospheric disruption, combined with ample coastal moisture, produced precipitation that spanned an unusually wide swath of the region—offshore, along the coast, across the core of the Atacama, and over the Andes. Totals reached a magnitude “rarely seen in the otherwise extremely arid region,” Garreaud said.

In some areas it fell as rain, not snow. Taltal, for instance, on Chile’s northern coast, accumulated nearly 40 millimeters (1.6 inches) of rain in three days—about 10 times its annual mean, Garreaud said. “We see these kinds of events only a few times, if any, per decade.”

The abundant precipitation spurred destructive mudflows and flash flooding in parts of northern Chile. The National Disaster Prevention and Response Service (SENAPRED) reported thousands were affected and hundreds of homes had major damage. 

Garreaud noted that the strengthening El Niño is the backdrop for the anomalously wet winter in north-central Chile. In addition to the August storms, a major event in July brought significant impacts to the country’s Norte Chico region. During El Niño, the subtropical Pacific high—which normally keeps the region dry—weakens, while a blocking high tends to form in the South Pacific near the tip of the continent. Together, these shifts push the Southern Hemisphere storm track equatorward.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey and MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Story by Kathryn Hansen.

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August 19, 2026: Terra MODIS

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References & Resources

• CR2 (2026, July 23) The extreme event of July 15-20, 2026, within the context of the developing El Niño. Accessed August 26, 2026.
• NASA Earth Observatory (2025, July 19) Rare Snowfall in the Atacama Desert. Accessed August 26, 2026.
• National Weather Service, Climate Prediction Center (2026, August 13) El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Diagnostic Discussion. Accessed August 26, 2026.
• The Watchers (2026, August 18) Snow and 90 km/h (55 mph) winds suspend ALMA observations in the Atacama Desert, Chile. Accessed August 26, 2026.

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NASA’s Earth-observing satellite missions track dozens of features of a changing planet — aerosols, sea levels, land cover, cloud cover — over years and decades. Sustaining that record for the scientific and operational communities who depend on it requires more than engineering talent. It requires planning for an uncertain future: anticipating where a mission delay or on-orbit event might create a gap in the data those communities rely on.

Lindsey Jacobson’s work helps NASA anticipate those disruptions before they happen and gives senior leaders options for managing them.
A Pathways intern in engineering, Jacobson supports NASA’s Earth Science Division through the NASA Earth Science Strategic Integration Environment (NESSIE) team within the Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate (SACD) at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

NASA’s Pathways program connects undergraduate and graduate students with NASA centers through internships that, with satisfactory performance, can lead to full-time civil service positions. Jacobson has returned to NASA Langley every summer since 2022, splitting her time between the center and finishing her mechanical engineering dissertation at North Carolina State University.

“The way we do Earth science is changing.“

The Problem Space

Jacobson and the NESSIE team support the Earth science satellite portfolio — dozens of missions, each measuring specific features of the planet, from clouds to sea surface temperature to land use. The goal is providing end user communities with the data products they depend on. The challenge is the unknown.

“There’s uncertainty about mission lifetimes and what could happen on orbit, and about schedules,” Jacobson explains. The team’s work gives NASA’s senior leadership a way to navigate that uncertainty: understanding where a gap in coverage might emerge and identifying options to mitigate or hedge against it. By providing alternative pathways for meeting end-user needs, this work supports senior leaders in managing a complex, interdependent portfolio.

Writing the Code

Within that effort, Jacobson’s focus is building analysis tools that give the team what she calls a “foresight ability.”

“It’s the ability to anticipate different things that might happen — changes that might occur across the portfolio of Earth-observing missions — and to have strategies in mind for how to respond, so we can keep delivering data to end users,” she says.

Not every change is bad news. Missions sometimes operate well beyond their planned lifespan, creating room to extend their value. But whether an adjustment is welcome or not, the principle is the same: know the options before anything happens.

Jacobson compares it to preparing for hurricane season. “You get the storm shutters, you buy the sandbags, and you have them pre-positioned,” she says. “Then when the warning comes, you’re not scrambling, and you’re not at risk of the store selling out. You already have what you need in place.” NESSIE’s work follows the same logic for the Earth-observing portfolio by understanding ahead of time what a disruption might mean and having a set of responses ready before anything happens.

“We proactively suggest the strategies and alternatives that could be enacted if there’s a change,” Jacobson says. “We do that ahead of time, so people understand what options might exist.”

Her approach carries echoes of her graduate research, which examines how complex systems — infrastructure that can’t simply be torn down and rebuilt, like the electric grid — must evolve deliberately instead. “We designed a grid, and now we live with that grid forever,” she says. “We can’t tear it down and build a new one. What we can do is modify, expand, and improve upon what we have.” It’s the same instinct for working with what exists, rather than starting from scratch, that shapes how she approaches her work at NASA.

Keeping Pace

Engineers arriving at NASA for the first time might expect the hardest part of the job to be technical. Jacobson found something else: the landscape itself is what demands the most adaptability.

“The way we do Earth science is changing,” she says. Commercial companies are increasingly contributing data alongside government agencies. New space agencies are entering the field. Innovative technologies and architectures are emerging all the time. Keeping pace with that shift — understanding how NASA’s own capabilities are evolving and how to best serve the communities that depend on the data — is as much a part of the job as any calculation.

Some of that adaptability shows up in smaller ways too, like the growing role of AI tools in her team’s own workflow. “Langley has done a lot of firsts,” Jacobson says, echoing something she heard recently from Trina Dyal, NASA Langley’s director, at an intern event. “And we want to continue to be the first. That means learning new things and figuring out how to bring them into how we work.”

On Jacobson’s Sci-Fi Shelf

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut

Jacobson received this novel in high school, let it sit on her shelf for years, and finally picked it up during the pandemic.

“It was very special. It touches a lot on the meaning of life, and that connects to some of the reasons I was motivated by space in the first place. The idea that space exploration can bring humanity together. That cosmic perspective.”

Part of the Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate at NASA’s Langley Research Center.
Learn more about our work by visiting our website.

Source: www.nasa.gov