1.
Svalbard
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Svalbard is a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. Situated north of mainland Europe, it is midway between continental Norway and the North Pole. The islands of the range from 74° to 81° north latitude. The largest island is Spitsbergen, followed by Nordaustlandet and Edgeøya, administratively, the archipelago is not part of any Norwegian county, but forms an unincorporated area administered by a governor appointed by the Norwegian government. Since 2002, Svalbards main settlement, Longyearbyen, has had a local government. Other settlements include the Russian mining community of Barentsburg, the station of Ny-Ålesund. Svalbard is the northernmost settlement in the world with a permanent civilian population, other settlements are farther north, but are populated only by rotating groups of researchers. The islands were first taken into use as a base in the 17th and 18th centuries. Coal mining started at the beginning of the 20th century, the Svalbard Treaty of 1920 recognizes Norwegian sovereignty, and the 1925 Svalbard Act made Svalbard a full part of the Kingdom of Norway. They also established Svalbard as an economic zone and a demilitarized zone. The Norwegian Store Norske and the Russian Arktikugol remain the mining companies in place. Research and tourism have become important supplementary industries, with the University Centre in Svalbard, no roads connect the settlements, instead snowmobiles, aircraft and boats serve inter-community transport. Svalbard Airport, Longyear serves as the main gateway, the archipelago features an Arctic climate, although with significantly higher temperatures than other areas at the same latitude. The flora take advantage of the period of midnight sun to compensate for the polar night. Svalbard is a ground for many seabirds, and also features polar bears, reindeer, the Arctic fox. Seven national parks and twenty-three nature reserves cover two-thirds of the archipelago, protecting the largely untouched, yet fragile, approximately 60% of the archipelago is covered with glaciers, and the islands feature many mountains and fjords. Svalbard and Jan Mayen are collectively assigned the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code SJ, both areas are administered by Norway, though they are separated by a distance of over 500 nautical miles and have very different administrative structures. The Svalbard Treaty of 1920 defines Svalbard as all islands, islets and skerries from 74° to 81° north latitude, the land area is 61,022 km2, and dominated by the island of Spitsbergen, which constitutes more than half the archipelago, followed by Nordaustlandet and Edgeøya
2.
Arctic Ocean
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The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the worlds five major oceans. Alternatively, the Arctic Ocean can be seen as the northernmost part of the all-encompassing World Ocean, located mostly in the Arctic north polar region in the middle of the Northern Hemisphere, the Arctic Ocean is almost completely surrounded by Eurasia and North America. It is partly covered by sea ice throughout the year and almost completely in winter, the summer shrinking of the ice has been quoted at 50%. The US National Snow and Ice Data Center uses satellite data to provide a record of Arctic sea ice cover. The Arctic may become ice free for the first time in human history within a few years or by 2040, for much of European history, the north polar regions remained largely unexplored and their geography conjectural. He was probably describing loose sea ice known today as growlers or bergy bits, his Thule was probably Norway, early cartographers were unsure whether to draw the region around the North Pole as land or water. The makers of navigational charts, more conservative than some of the more fanciful cartographers, tended to leave the region blank and this lack of knowledge of what lay north of the shifting barrier of ice gave rise to a number of conjectures. In England and other European nations, the myth of an Open Polar Sea was persistent, john Barrow, longtime Second Secretary of the British Admiralty, promoted exploration of the region from 1818 to 1845 in search of this. In the United States in the 1850s and 1860s, the explorers Elisha Kane, even quite late in the century, the eminent authority Matthew Fontaine Maury included a description of the Open Polar Sea in his textbook The Physical Geography of the Sea. Nevertheless, as all the explorers who travelled closer and closer to the reported, the polar ice cap is quite thick. Fridtjof Nansen was the first to make a crossing of the Arctic Ocean. The first surface crossing of the ocean was led by Wally Herbert in 1969, in a dog sled expedition from Alaska to Svalbard, with air support. The first nautical transit of the pole was made in 1958 by the submarine USS Nautilus. Since 1937, Soviet and Russian manned drifting ice stations have extensively monitored the Arctic Ocean, scientific settlements were established on the drift ice and carried thousands of kilometres by ice floes. In World War II, the European region of the Arctic Ocean was heavily contested, the Arctic Ocean occupies a roughly circular basin and covers an area of about 14,056,000 km2, almost the size of Antarctica. The coastline is 45,390 km long and it is surrounded by the land masses of Eurasia, North America, Greenland, and by several islands. It is connected to the Pacific Ocean by the Bering Strait and to the Atlantic Ocean through the Greenland Sea, countries bordering the Arctic Ocean are, Russia, Norway, Iceland, Greenland, Canada and the United States. There are several ports and harbours around the Arctic Ocean In Alaska, in Canada, ships may anchor at Churchill in Manitoba, Nanisivik in Nunavut, Tuktoyaktuk or Inuvik in the Northwest territories
3.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
4.
Spitsbergen
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Spitsbergen is the largest and only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in northern Norway. Constituting the westernmost bulk of the archipelago, it borders the Arctic Ocean, the Norwegian Sea, Spitsbergen covers an area of 39,044 km2, making it the largest island in Norway and the 36th-largest in the world. Other settlements, in addition to research outposts, are the Russian mining community of Barentsburg, the community of Ny-Ålesund. The island was first used as a base in the 17th and 18th centuries. Coal mining started at the end of the 19th century and several permanent communities were established, the Svalbard Treaty of 1920 recognized Norwegian sovereignty and established Svalbard as a free economic zone and a demilitarized zone. The Norwegian Store Norske and the Russian Arktikugol remain the mining companies. Research and tourism have become important supplementary industries, featuring among others the University Centre in Svalbard, no roads connect the settlements, instead snowmobiles, aircraft, and boats serve as local transport. Svalbard Airport, Longyear provides the point of entry and exit. The island has an Arctic climate, although significantly higher temperatures than other places at the same latitude. The flora benefits from the period of midnight sun, which compensates for the polar night. Svalbard is a ground for many seabirds, and also supports polar bears, reindeer. Six national parks protect the largely untouched, yet fragile environment, the island has many glaciers, mountains and fjords. Spitsbergen was named by its discoverer, the Dutch navigator Willem Barentsz, the name Spitsbergen, meaning “pointed mountains”, was at first applied to both the main island and the archipelago as a whole. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, English whalers referred to the islands as Greenland, the Spitzbergen spelling was used in English during the 19th century, for instance by Beechey, Laing, and the Royal Society. In 1906, the Arctic explorer Sir Martin Conway thought that the Spitzbergen spelling was incorrect, preferring Spitsbergen as he noted that the name was Dutch and this had little effect on British practice. In 1920, the international treaty determining the fate of the islands was entitled the Spitsbergen Treaty, the islands were generally referred to in the USA as Spitsbergen from that time, although the spelling Spitzbergen was also commonly used through the 20th century. Under Norwegian governance, the archipelago was named Svalbard in 1925, by the end of the 20th century, this usage had become common. The first confirmed and recorded sighting of the island by a European was by Willem Barentsz, the first good map with the east coast roughly indicated, appeared in 1623, printed by Willem Janszoon Blaeu
5.
Nordaustlandet
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Nordaustlandet is the second-largest island in the archipelago of Svalbard, Norway, with an area of 14,443 square kilometres. It lies north east of Spitsbergen, separated by Hinlopen Strait, much of Nordaustlandet lies under large ice caps, mainly Austfonna and Vestfonna, the remaining parts of the north being tundra inhabited by reindeer and walruses. The island is uninhabited and lies entirely within Nordaust-Svalbard Nature Reserve, english walrus hunters first sighted the south point of Nordaustlandet in 1617. This discovery was shown on the Muscovy Companys map, with the island labeled as Sir Thomas Smyths Iland and it also shows the North Cape. A Dutch map of 1710 was the first to show the island accurately, the rock types in Nordaustlandet stem from many different geological eras. The northern part consists of old crystalline basement, with such as marble, quartzite, mica schist, gneiss. East of Lady Franklinfjorden, on the peninsula Botniahalvøya and east of Duvefjorden there are volcanic rocks, in the east and south of Rijpfjorden the bedrock is made up of distinctive red-coloured granite. The Rijpfjord granite is medium grained, and contains two micas in addition to quartz, plagioclase and pink K-feldspar and it was emplaced in late Silurian times. Layered gabbro and dolerite of Silurian age occur at Kapp Laura in easternmost Nordaustlandet, on the island of Storøya, on Andréeneset, in the southern part of Kvitøya, gneisses and granites are the most common rock types. Four generations of rocks, gneiss, amphibolite, and grey and pink granite are present on Isispynten, south of Wahlenbergfjorden there is a large area with sedimentary rocks – mostly limestone and dolomite – from the Carboniferous and Permian. The youngest rocks in Nordaustlandet are Jurassic–Cretaceous dolerite dikes, which intrude the basement rocks on the island of Lågøya, unconsolidated deposits in Nordaustlandet consist of scree slopes, block fields and raised shore deposits. There are only small amounts of river deposits, the largest strandflats on Nordaustlandet can be found in the north-west, around Murchisonfjorden and on the island of Lågøya. Another large strandflat is Svartknausflya in the south, just west of the glacier of Bråsvellbreen, here, there are raised shore deposits up to 120 m. a. s. l. where ancient whale bones have been found 70 m above today’s sea level. Svartknausflya is also the largest moraine area in Nordaustlandet, it measures about 70 km2, glacial activity has shaped the landscape in Nordaustlandet through several ice ages. Gentle plateaus and rounded mountains are the most common sight, the tallest and steepest mountains, up to 600 m. a. s. l. can be found in the north. The eastern part of Nordaustlandet is covered in glaciers, and there are few areas without ice, between Vibebukta and Kapp Laura, the steep front of the Austfonna ice cap dominates. The glacier has retracted a bit during recent decades, revealing new areas of dry land on the few headlands that can be found around here, Austfonna, including Vegafonna, stretch across an area of 8,450 km2. Austfonna covers approximately 58% of Nordaustlandet, the largest areas with no ice are between Austfonna and Vestfonna and on the peninsulas in the north and north-west of Nordaustlandet
6.
Newtontoppen
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Newtontoppen is the largest and highest mountain in Svalbard, at 1,713 m. Its peak is the highest point on Svalbard and it is located at the north east corner on the island of Spitsbergen. The mountain is made of Silurian granite. The mountain was first ascended by Helge Backlund on 4 August 1900, the mountain was named after Isaac Newton in 1898. The surrounding mountains were named after other famous astronomers and mathematicians the same year, list of European ultra prominent peaks Media related to Newtontoppen at Wikimedia Commons
7.
Longyearbyen
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Longyearbyen (Norwegian pronunciation, is the largest settlement and the administrative centre of Svalbard, Norway. As of December 2015, the town had a population of 2,144, Longyearbyen is located in the Longyear Valley and on the shore of Adventfjorden, a bay of Isfjorden located on the west coast of Spitsbergen. Since 2002, Longyearbyen Community Council has had many of the same responsibilities of a municipality, including utilities, education, cultural facilities, fire brigade, roads, the town is the seat of the Governor of Svalbard. It is the worlds northernmost settlement of any kind with greater than 1,000 permanent residents, known as Longyear City until 1926, the town was established by and named after John Munro Longyear, whose Arctic Coal Company started coal mining operations in 1906. Operations were taken over by Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani in 1916, the town was almost completely destroyed by the German Kriegsmarine on 8 August 1943, but was rebuilt after the Second World War. Traditionally, Longyearbyen was a town, but most mining operations have moved to Sveagruva since the 1990s, while the town has seen a large increase in tourism. This has seen the arrival of such as the University Centre in Svalbard. The community is served by Svalbard Airport, Longyear and Svalbard Church, in 1896, Vesteraalens Dampskibsselskab started tours to Hotellneset. To accommodate tourists, they built a hotel, but it was not profitable and was closed after the 1897 season. However, two families overwintered in 1898–99 and Norway Post operated a post office at Hotellneset from 1897 to 1899, the first commercially viable coal on Svalbard was harvested by Søren Zakariassen in 1899. In 1901, Bergen-Spitsbergen Kullgrube-kompani started mining coal in Adventtoppen, the American industrialist John Munroe Longyear visited Spitsbergen as a tourist in 1901, where he met with an expedition prospecting for coal. He returned to Spitsbergen 1903, where he met Henrik B, næss in Adventfjorden, who gave him samples and information on coal fields. Along with his associate Frederick Ayer, Longyear bought the Norwegian claims on the west side of Adventfjorden, in 1906, the Boston-based Arctic Coal Company, with Ayer and Longyear as the main shareholders, started mining in Mine 1a, after having built docks and housing. The company had American administration, but mostly Norwegian labourers, Coal was transported the 1.2 kilometers from the mine to the port using an aerial tramway. In 1913, the company started work to open Mine 2a. Following financial difficulties during the First World War, the operations were bought by Store Norske. That year, SNSK built five new barracks, including one that was made into a hospital, SNSK introduced its own money with approval from Norges Bank, consisting entirely of banknotes at par with Norwegian krone. The American community buried their dead at Hotellneset, in 1918, eleven people were killed by the Spanish flu and a graveyard was established in Longyear City
8.
Moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer
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The instruments capture data in 36 spectral bands ranging in wavelength from 0.4 µm to 14.4 µm and at varying spatial resolutions. Together the instruments image the entire Earth every 1 to 2 days, MODIS has used the marine optical buoy for vicarious calibration. MODIS is succeeded by the VIIRS instrument on board the Suomi NPP satellite launched in 2011, the MODIS characterization support team is dedicated to the production of high-quality MODIS calibrated product which is a precursor to every geophysical science product. A detailed description of the MCST mission statement and other details can be found at MCST Web, with its low spatial resolution but high temporal resolution, MODIS data is useful to track changes in the landscape over time. The United States Forest Services Remote Sensing Applications Center analyzes MODIS imagery on a basis to provide information for the management. The following MODIS Level 3 datasets are available from NASA, as processed by the Collection 5 software, most of the data is available in the HDF-EOS format — a variant of Hierarchical Data Format prescribed for the data derived from Earth Observing System missions. Imaging spectroscopy NASA World Wind Official NASA site MODIS bands and spectral ranges MODIS Images of the Day MODIS Image of the Day – Google Gadget referring to MODIS image of the day
9.
NASA
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President Dwight D. Eisenhower established NASA in 1958 with a distinctly civilian orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29,1958, disestablishing NASAs predecessor, the new agency became operational on October 1,1958. Since that time, most US space exploration efforts have led by NASA, including the Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station. Currently, NASA is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches. NASA shares data with various national and international such as from the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite. Since 2011, NASA has been criticized for low cost efficiency, from 1946, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics had been experimenting with rocket planes such as the supersonic Bell X-1. In the early 1950s, there was challenge to launch a satellite for the International Geophysical Year. An effort for this was the American Project Vanguard, after the Soviet launch of the worlds first artificial satellite on October 4,1957, the attention of the United States turned toward its own fledgling space efforts. This led to an agreement that a new federal agency based on NACA was needed to conduct all non-military activity in space. The Advanced Research Projects Agency was created in February 1958 to develop technology for military application. On July 29,1958, Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, a NASA seal was approved by President Eisenhower in 1959. Elements of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency and the United States Naval Research Laboratory were incorporated into NASA, earlier research efforts within the US Air Force and many of ARPAs early space programs were also transferred to NASA. In December 1958, NASA gained control of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA has conducted many manned and unmanned spaceflight programs throughout its history. Some missions include both manned and unmanned aspects, such as the Galileo probe, which was deployed by astronauts in Earth orbit before being sent unmanned to Jupiter, the experimental rocket-powered aircraft programs started by NACA were extended by NASA as support for manned spaceflight. This was followed by a space capsule program, and in turn by a two-man capsule program. This goal was met in 1969 by the Apollo program, however, reduction of the perceived threat and changing political priorities almost immediately caused the termination of most of these plans. NASA turned its attention to an Apollo-derived temporary space laboratory, to date, NASA has launched a total of 166 manned space missions on rockets, and thirteen X-15 rocket flights above the USAF definition of spaceflight altitude,260,000 feet. The X-15 was an NACA experimental rocket-powered hypersonic research aircraft, developed in conjunction with the US Air Force, the design featured a slender fuselage with fairings along the side containing fuel and early computerized control systems
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