The new NASA satellite called “Terra” was launched successfully in December 1999 with MODIS and four other sensors on board.
Terra (formerly known as EOS AM-1) is the flagship of NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS), a major international science program to monitor climate and environmental change. Terra is collecting a new global data set to enable research into the ways that Earth's lands, oceans, atmosphere, ice, radiant energy, and life function as a whole system. In February 2000, Terra reached final orbit and acquired its first images, some of which are now available to the public.
Learn more at the Terra website
These data are integral to the GTOS/NPP Demonstration Project. Data products from the MODIS instrument on board Terra will be compared with global validation sites as part of a collaborative Demonstration Project of the Global Terrestrial Observing System (GTOS). The collaboration, known as the GTOS - Net Primary Productivity (NPP) Demo Project will distribute global product map imagery of NPP, leaf are index (LAI) measures and land cover classifications to GTOS sites for evaluation with ground-based measurements. This validation effort will complement a more intensive effort within NASA’s “BigFoot” validation project. The goal will be to translate this standard product to regionally specific crop, range, and forest yield maps for land-management applications:
Learn more about the GTOS/ GTNET Demo Project