Welcome to a new era for The Earth Observer newsletter! Our 35th This anniversary also marks the official launch of our new website. Over the past year and a half, The Earth Observer has evolved from a print publication (the last print issue was November-December 2022) to publish PDFs online only (final issue in PDF (published May 2024) to publish individual articles on our new site. While this decision changes the format of The Earth Observer to be more in line with other online publications, our intention is that the content will remain distinctive. Readers can expect to continue to receive the same quality reporting on NASA’s Earth science activities that they have depended on for more than 35 years.
The site’s launch coincides with a historic milestone for The Earth Observer. 35 years ago, in March 1989, the site first printed issue The newsletter was produced. At the time, The Earth Observer was a vital communications tool for the initial group of Earth Observing System (EOS) researchers, who had been selected that same year. They depended on the periodic delivery of the newsletter to their physical mailboxes to keep them informed of decisions made at recent science team and payload panel meetings, as well as other program-related activities.
As communications technologies have evolved, so has The Earth Observer. The intertwined story of the evolution of EOS and The Earth Observer has been told in previous issues of our publication. (See for example The Earth Observer: Twenty-five Years of NASA Earth Science Storytelling in the March-April 2014 issue [Volume 26, Issue 2, pp. 4-13] And Editor’s thoughts on the thirtieth anniversary Publishing content online marks the next step in the evolution of The Earth Observer.[Volume31Issue2-onlineversionpp1-4)PublishingcontentonlinemarksthenextstepintheevolutionofTheEarthObserver[Volume31Issue2-onlineversionpp1-4)PublishingcontentonlinemarksthenextstepintheevolutionofTheEarthObserver
On the new website, readers will find overlapping content from our November-December 2023 and the final PDF issues – as well as the original content. To maintain a sense of continuity with our past, the content is organized in the same way as previous issues. There are separate sections for feature articles, meeting summaries, news content, and “Editor’s Corner,” as well as calendars for NASA and global scientific community activities.
Given The Earth Observer’s focus on history, and in keeping with the organization of our previous website, the new site also includes an Archives section where readers can view PDFs of all previous issues of The Earth Observer. There is also a list where our team has compiled links to many of our most popular historical articles. In addition to articles written to mark The Earth Observer’s anniversaries (including the two referenced above), the page contains a link to the most popular articles Outlook on EOS Series. These articles were originally published in The Earth Observer from 2008 to 2011, each focusing on one or more particular aspects of EOS’s early history from the perspective of someone who lived it. There are also links to articles that were written to mark milestone anniversaries of satellite missions and observing networks, as well as to summaries of several symposia that include historical information.
We hope that readers will find this collection of historical information a useful link to the past as The Earth Observer moves full speed toward its digital future.
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