PDS logoPlanetary Data System
PDS Information
Find a Node - Use these links to navigate to any of the 8 publicly accessible PDS Nodes.

This bar indicates that you are within the PDS enterprise which includes 6 science discipline nodes and 2 support nodes which are overseen by the Project Management Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). Each node is led by an expert in the subject discipline, supported by an advisory group of other practitioners of that discipline, and subject to selection and approval under a regular NASA Research Announcement.
Click here to return to the Photojournal Home Page Click here to view a list of Photojournal Image Galleries Photojournal_inner_header
Latest Images  |  Spacecraft & Technology  |  Animations  |  Space Images App  |  Feedback  |  Photojournal Search  

PIA21960: Hurricane Maria's Strengthening Winds Seen in NASA SMAP Image
 Target Name:  Earth
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  SMAP
 Product Size:  1808 x 895 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  JPL
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA21960.tif (454.2 kB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA21960.jpg (200.2 kB)

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

The radiometer instrument on NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) spacecraft captured this image of Hurricane Maria at 6:27 a.m. EDT on Sept. 19, 2017 (10:27 UTC), showing an estimated maximum surface wind speed of 126.6 miles per hour (56.6 meters per second). While Maria was already a Category 5 hurricane at the time of this observation, it is an extremely tightly organized hurricane and SMAP cannot fully resolve its highest winds due to the 25-mile (40-kilometer) resolution of SMAP.

SMAP is managed for NASA's Science Mission Directorate by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. JPL is managed for NASA by Caltech. A consortium of researchers from other universities participate on the SMAP mission science team, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University and the University of Montana, which provided the SMAP surface water imagery.

For more information about SMAP, visit http://smap.jpl.nasa.gov.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC/University of Montana

Image Addition Date:
2017-09-19