地球E

NASA is an exploration agency, and one of our missions is to know our home. We develop novel tools and techniques for understanding how our planet works -- for the benefit of humanity and for insights we need to explore other moons and planets. NASA's Earth Science Division operates more than 20 satellites in orbit, sponsors hundreds of research programs and studies, and funds opportunities to put data to use for societal needs. We develop new ways to observe the oceans, land cover, ice, atmosphere, and life, and we measure how changes in one drive changes in others over the short and long term. While listening to and collaborating with industry leaders, international partners, academic institutions, and other users of our data, we drive innovations and deliver science to help inform decisions that benefit the nation and the world.

Sites relevant to the start of the American Revolutionary War are interspersed throughout the modern-day Boston metropolitan region.

The farms and gardens of Mount Vernon played a central role in the life of America’s first president.

Two hundred years ago, a battle in the port city of Baltimore inspired the writing of America’s national anthem.

Tens of thousands of abandoned mines threaten waterways across the American West, but identifying which sites urgently need cleanup is slow and expensive. Now, NASA’s EMIT instrument can analyze the unique light signatures of mine waste from space to help focus remediation efforts where they're needed most.

Learn how NASA’s studies of Earth bring benefits to the nation and world.

Earth – our home planet – is the third planet from the Sun, and the fifth largest planet. It's the only place we know of inhabited by living things.

93,327,712 miles / 150,196,428 kilometers

While Earth is only the fifth largest planet in the solar system, it is the only planet in our solar system with liquid water on the surface. Just slightly larger than nearby Venus, Earth is the biggest of the four planets closest to the Sun, all of which are made of rock and metal.

Earth is the only planet in the solar system whose English name does not come from Greek or Roman mythology. The name was taken from Old English and Germanic. It simply means "the ground." There are, of course, many names for our planet in the thousands of languages spoken by the people of the third planet from the Sun.

The name Earth is about 1,000 years old. All of the planets, except for Earth, were named after Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. However, the name Earth is a Germanic word, which simply means “the ground.”

Earth has a very hospitable temperature and mix of chemicals that have made life abundant here. Most notably, Earth is unique in that most of our planet is covered in liquid water, since the temperature allows liquid water to exist for extended periods of time. Earth's vast oceans provided a convenient place for life to begin about 3.8 billion years ago.