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Earth-surface monitoring is at risk — more imaging tools are urgently needed

  1. Etienne Berthier

    1. University of Toulouse, Toulouse, France.

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  2. Jeffrey S. Kargel

    1. Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona, USA.

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  3. Bruce Raup

    1. US National Snow and Ice Data Center, Boulder, Colorado, USA.

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  4. Michael Zemp

    1. University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.

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After almost 25 years, the Visible and Near Infrared Sensor on the NASA Terra satellite’s Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer instrument (ASTER) was thought to have expired on 11 May. On 15 May, engineers temporarily resurrected it, but the Terra mission is likely to run out of fuel by 2027.

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Nature 630, 563 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02052-x

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 26 June 2024: An earlier version of this Correspondence article misstated the reasons for the ambiguity of elevation data.

Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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