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Residents of the U.S. Mid-Atlantic endured a formidable winter in 2025-2026, marked by several high-impact storms and prolonged stretches of cold temperatures that left parts of the Chesapeake Bay frozen over. Longtime residents may recall a winter nearly 50 years ago when the region saw even more widespread ice cover. 

The MSS (Multispectral Scanner System) on Landsat 1 captured this image during the exceptionally cold winter of 1976-1977. The mosaic combines two Landsat scenes acquired on February 7 with a third captured on February 8. The landscape is shown in false color (MSS bands 6-5-4), in which ice appears in shades of blue, green, and white. On land, snow appears white, vegetation is red, and urban areas take on brown-gray tones.

A NASA analysis published in 1980 drew on these and other Landsat images to examine the anomalous ice conditions. Images indicate that ice began forming in the Chesapeake Bay’s upper tributaries in late December 1976 and spread to the middle of the upper bay by mid-January 1977. It reached its maximum extent around the time of this image, one week into February, when ice spanned 85 percent of the bay.

Persistent westerly winds at the start of February pushed ice toward the eastern shores of the Chesapeake and Delaware bays, contributing to fractures visible across the ice’s surface. As winds subsided, calmer conditions allowed new ice to form in areas of previously open water, visible in the image as thinner, darker blue patches. Reports from icebreaking operations indicated ice thicknesses reached up to 30 centimeters (12 inches) in the upper bay and up to 20 centimeters (8 inches) in the lower bay, with some tributaries seeing twice that amount.

Articles describing the event often show photos of people ice skating off Kent Island in front of the Bay Bridge and people driving cars and tractors across the ice. But the deep freeze strained the region, too. The ice and cold water caused high mortality in the area’s shellfish. And the crushing weight of the ice shifting with the tides damaged numerous piers, marinas, and lighthouses.

In winter 2025-2026, ice on the Chesapeake and Delaware bays appeared less extensive, with U.S. National Ice Center ice charts showing around 38 percent coverage on February 9 and 10. Still, concentrations in the upper bay and its tributaries this season were substantial enough to allow uncommon winter activities, including ice boaters racing across the frozen Claiborne Cove of Maryland’s Eastern Shore. At the same time, it created challenges for local watermen, according to news reports, trapping boats and limiting access to the bay.  

NASA Earth Observatory image by Mike Taylor, Ginger Butcher, and Michala Garrison, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Kathryn Hansen.

References & Resources

• CBS News (2026, February 9) Frozen Chesapeake Bay leaves Maryland watermen struggling during peak oyster season. Accessed February 26, 2026.
• Chesapeake Bay Magazine (2025, January 16) Ice Heroes: A Maryland Pilot’s Firsthand Account of the Historic 1977 Bay Freeze. Accessed February 26, 2026.
• Foster, J. L. (1980, March) Ice Conditions on the Chesapeake s Bay as Observes! from Landsat During the Winters of 1977, 1978 and 1979. NASA Technical Memorandum, 80657.
• Library of Congress (2023, July 28) The World as Seen by ERTS-1. Accessed February 26, 2026.
• NASA (2026, February 13) Landsat 1 Graphics Library. Accessed February 26, 2026.
• NASA (2026, February 12) Sick of freezing temperatures? For ice boaters, they’ve been a bonanza. Accessed February 26, 2026.
• Secrets of the Eastern Shore (2022, January 16) The Great Eastern Shore Deep Freeze of 1976-77! Accessed February 26, 2026.
• U.S. National Ice Center (2026, February 26) Mid-Atlantic Ice Chart. Accessed February 26, 2026.

Description

With a simple motion, a jack-in-the-box-like spring designed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory showed the potential of additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, to cut costs and complexity for futuristic space antennas. Called JPL Additive Compliant Canister (JACC), the spring deployed on the small commercial spacecraft Proteus Space’s Mercury One on Feb. 3, 2026. An onboard camera captured this video of the spring popping out of its container as the spacecraft passed over the Pacific Ocean in low Earth orbit.

Figure A is a still image of JACC after deployment, taken above Antarctica.

JACC is one of two JPL payloads on the spacecraft that are demonstrating new technologies designed to take up reduced volume while precisely deploying antennas on future orbiters. JACC’s success demonstrates that 3D-printed mechanisms can be built faster, cheaper, and with less complexity than traditionally fabricated space hardware. 

Printed out of titanium, JACC uses three times fewer parts than similar structures: Combined into a single part is a hinge, panel, compression spring, and two torsion springs. Weighing just over 1 pound (498 grams), it is about 4 inches (10 centimeters) on each side. The spring, which extends from a packed height of just over 1 inch to about 6 inches (3 centimeters to 15 centimeters), is modeled after communication antennas commonly used on satellites. 

The second demonstration payload aboard Mercury One is the Solid Underconstrained Multi-Frequency (SUM) Deployable Antenna for Earth Science. Together with JACC, the two payloads go by the name Prototype Actuated Nonlinear Deployables Offering Repeatable Accuracy Stowed on a Box (PANDORASBox). They were both conceived, built, tested, and delivered for flight by JPL in less than one year on minimal budgets.

Mercury One launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Nov. 28, 2025, as part of SpaceX’s Transporter-15 mission.

JPL internal research development funds supported JACC, as did NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO).

By Chris Burns, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

For over 50 years, the Landsat program has provided the longest continuous satellite record of Earth’s land surface from space. Landsat 9, launched in 2021, is the latest mission in this remarkable legacy — building on decades of Earth observation with upgraded technology, including enhanced radiometric resolution, improved signal-to-noise performance, and polar night thermal imaging. Working in tandem with Landsat 8 to map the entire planet every eight days, Landsat 9’s data is being fused with the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellites to enable near-daily global observations, delivering sharper, more detailed observations that help scientists and communities monitor a changing planet.

VIDEO SCRIPT

It started over 50 years ago with an idea:
 
A satellite, orbiting Earth, observing our planet’s surface, gathering data, day in, day out.
 
That idea gave birth to the Landsat program, a partnership between NASA and the US Geological Survey, the longest continuous record of Earth’s land surface from space.
 
Landsat 1’s launch in 1972 was the first link in a chain of 8 satellites, each one building upon the last.
 
And today, Landsat 9 carries that legacy forward.
 
Since its launch in 2021, Landsat 9 helping collect more scenes per day than any previous Landsat satellite mission. collects as many scenes per day as Landsats 5 & 7 combined.
 
Working in tandem with Landsat 8, the pair now collect nearly 1,500 scenes daily, creating a complete map of the planet’s land surface every 8 days.
 
It’s not just about scale — it’s about Landsat’s ability to revisit the same scene multiple times a month. With this pace of acquisitions, Landsat 9 helps track seasonal shifts in crops, the spread of wildfires, the aftermath of storms, and even rapid changes in glaciers and coastlines.
 
More images mean more data, fueling research and scientific applications around the world.
 
But when it comes to Landsat 9’s imagery, it’s not just about quantity – it’s about quality too.
 
While Landsat 9’s main design is nearly identical to Landsat 8’s, it’s able to collect data in greater detail thanks to an upgraded radiometric resolution — 14-bit instead of Landsat 8’s 12-bit.
 
Think of it like upgrading from a box of 4,000 crayons to one with 16,000 — every shade captured, every subtle detail sharper.
 
Landsat 9’s quadrupled radiometric sensitivity makes a real difference when capturing data over the planet’s brightest surfaces, like snow and ice, revealing subtle changes that might otherwise go unnoticed: shifts in ice extent, changes in how surfaces reflect sunlight, even the growth of glacial lakes forming where ice once stood.
 
Seeing more shades of detail is powerful, but it only matters if the picture itself is clear.
 
Landsat 9 not only sharpens what we can detect, it also cuts through the static, delivering a stronger signal-to-noise ratio, which means images that have less interference. 
 
It’s like trying to hear a whisper in a noisy room — Landsat 9 quiets the static so we don’t miss anything important.
 
And that clarity makes a difference, especially over dark surfaces like water which can harbor harmful algal blooms that can spread quickly, threatening drinking water supplies, local wildlife and even human safety.
 
By spotting these blooms with greater sensitivity, Landsat 9 gives communities and scientists more reliable and actionable information to respond.
 
Landsat 9 doesn’t clock out when the sun goes down – its onboard thermal sensor, TIRS, measures our planet’s surface heat even in darkness.
 
That means we can monitor urban heat islands, volcanic hotspots, and water temperature at night.
 
Since 2022, the US Geological Survey’s special request data program has implemented the Landsat Extended Acquisition of the Poles, or LEAP for short, taking advantage of Landsat 9’s ability to see in the dark to acquire imagery in polar regions year-round when the sun can set for up to six months at the poles.
 
Together with Landsat 8, the satellites can detect features like meltwater, cracks, and even open water within ice under low light conditions.
 
The enhanced coverage helps scientists better monitor ice dynamics and seasonal changes in polar regions, detecting calving events, surface melt, and changes in sea ice extent even during the dark months.
 
Landsat 9 isn’t working alone — it’s part of a global team of satellites, where collaboration across agencies and nations is giving us the clearest, most consistent view of Earth yet.
 
NASA’s Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 project fuses data from Landsats 8 & 9 with that of the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 A,B and C satellites to form a seamless, consistent surface reflectance record.
 
In this “virtual constellation,” Landsat 9 contributes its spectral precision and calibrated data, helping enable global observations every 1-2 days at 30-meter resolution.
 
Landsat 9’s high fidelity, radiometric stability, and continuity anchor HLS, ensuring that the fused product maintains the scientific integrity that Landsat users expect.
 
Landsat 9 is more than just today’s mission — it’s part of the foundation for the future.
 
Through the Sustainable Land Imaging program, NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey aims to preserve our ability to keep a continuous, reliable record of Earth’s land for decades to come.
 
That means not just flying satellites, but building the technology, partnerships, and planning needed to keep the record unbroken.
 
Within SLI, NASA’s Sustainable Land Imaging–Technology initiative is testing new instruments that could make future missions smaller, more capable, and more efficient.
 
Landsat 9 is NASA’s first SLI mission and plays a key role here, setting the benchmark for data quality and coverage, proving what works today and guiding the technologies of tomorrow.
 
Its stability and precision are hallmarks of previous lessons learned, allowing scientists to trust the record across decades, and its success helps guide the innovations that will come next.
 
For more than half a century, Landsat satellites have given us an unbroken record of our changing planet.
 
In just four years, Landsat 9 has brought that vision into even sharper focus — capturing millions of scenes, advancing how we track water, ice, and land, and strengthening the world’s longest Earth-observation record.
 
It’s not just another satellite in orbit. It’s a bridge — carrying the Landsat legacy forward with enhanced technology while preparing the foundation for the future of sustainable land imaging.
 
Because with Landsat, every image is more than a picture — it’s a calibrated digital record, providing knowledge we can use to understand, protect, and sustain life on Earth.

NASA astronaut and deputy director of the Flight Operations Directorate Kjell Lindgren takes a selfie with panelists and the audience at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Feb. 25, 2026. Actors Ryan Gosling and Sandra Huller, screenwriter Drew Goddard, directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, and producer and writer of the “Project Hail Mary” novel Andy Weir stopped by NASA JPL to talk about their experience making the movie and the collaboration between scientists and creative media.

NASA supported the creative team behind the movie with subject matter experts who answered questions from the crew, and Lindgren met with Gosling during filming to share insights on human spaceflight and being an astronaut.

Image credit: NASA/Dan Goods

With rollback of NASA’s Artemis II SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft to the Vehicle Assembly Building complete, the agency will host a news conference at 10 a.m. EST on Friday, Feb. 27. Live from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, leadership will discuss the work ahead for the test flight, as well as provide a broader update on the Artemis campaign.

The news conference will stream on NASA’s YouTube channel. An instant replay will be available online. Learn how to watch NASA content on a variety of platforms, including social media.

NASA participants include:

• Administrator Jared Isaacman
• Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya
• Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator for Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate

This event is open to in-person for media previously credentialed at NASA Kennedy for the Artemis II launch. To participate virtually, media must RSVP for call details no later than 30 minutes prior to the start of the event to the newsroom at NASA Kennedy: ksc-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov. NASA’s media credentialing policy is online.

For more about NASA’s Artemis campaign, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov

-end-

Bethany Stevens / Cheryl Warner
NASA Headquarters
202-358-1600
bethany.c.stevens@nasa.gov / cheryl.m.warner@nasa.gov

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