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Floodwaters Overwhelm Thailand

✇NASA




October 7, 2025
October 2, 2026

A narrow river (dark blue) meanders across vegetated land (bright green) in a false-color satellite image. Small geometric ponds or waterlogged fields appear on the left side of the scene.
A narrow river (dark blue) meanders across vegetated land (bright green) in a false-color satellite image. Small geometric ponds or waterlogged fields appear on the left side of the scene.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin

In a false-color satellite image of the same area, floodwaters (dark blue) flank a meandering river and cover a large swath of agricultural or aquacultural land primarily on the left side of the scene.
In a false-color satellite image of the same area, floodwaters (dark blue) flank a meandering river and cover a large swath of agricultural or aquacultural land primarily on the left side of the scene.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin

A narrow river (dark blue) meanders across vegetated land (bright green) in a false-color satellite image. Small geometric ponds or waterlogged fields appear on the left side of the scene.
A narrow river (dark blue) meanders across vegetated land (bright green) in a false-color satellite image. Small geometric ponds or waterlogged fields appear on the left side of the scene.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin
In a false-color satellite image of the same area, floodwaters (dark blue) flank a meandering river and cover a large swath of agricultural or aquacultural land primarily on the left side of the scene.
In a false-color satellite image of the same area, floodwaters (dark blue) flank a meandering river and cover a large swath of agricultural or aquacultural land primarily on the left side of the scene.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin

October 7, 2025

October 2, 2026


September falls in the heart of the monsoon season in Thailand, where cities and towns are accustomed to the afternoon rains and thunderstorms that frequently roll through. But throughout late September and early October 2026, persistent heavy rains punctuated by intense downpours left low-lying areas across the country in Southeast Asia under sustained flooding.

Prachin Buri province was among the areas where flooding was widespread. The right image above shows land along the Bang Pakong River and nearby agricultural areas and aquaculture facilities inundated on October 2, 2026. The left image shows the same area at the same time of year in 2025. Acquired with NASA-USGS Landsat satellites, the images are false-color to better distinguish water from vegetation, developed land, and other surfaces. The bright red shapes are floating solar arrays.

Some of the flooding likely stemmed from a low-pressure system that stalled over the area for several days in late September. Stoked by moisture and energy from the warm Gulf of Thailand nearby, the system delivered especially intense rains to the region. About 100 kilometers (60 miles) to the west, Bangkok received nearly 300 millimeters (11.8 inches) of rain over a 48-hour period, according to news reports, close to the average monthly rainfall total for September of 344 millimeters (13.5 inches).

Since mid-September, flooding has occurred in 50 provinces across the country, affecting over 4 million people and causing dozens of deaths, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Government agencies estimate about 270,000 hectares (670,000 acres) of farmland, including rice fields and fruit orchards, have been damaged.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Lindsey Doermann.

Downloads

A narrow river (dark blue) meanders across vegetated land (bright green) in a false-color satellite image. Small geometric ponds or waterlogged fields appear on the left side of the scene.

October 7, 2025

JPEG (3.56 MB)

In a false-color satellite image of the same area, floodwaters (dark blue) flank a meandering river and cover a large swath of agricultural or aquacultural land primarily on the left side of the scene.

October 2, 2026

JPEG (3.79 MB)

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Stops Along the Path of Totality

✇NASA
A peninsula in Iceland stretches across the image to the left. A prominent glacier-capped volcano sits near its western end.
The glacier-capped Snæfellsjökull volcano is the defining feature of Iceland’s Snæfellsnes peninsula, shown in this image acquired with the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9 on July 25, 2026.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison

The Sun, Moon, and Earth align on August 12, 2026, to produce a total solar eclipse. When this celestial event last occurred, on April 8, 2024, the path of totality stretched across North America, giving millions the chance to glimpse the Sun’s corona. In 2026, the viewing locales are more limited; only a handful of land areas in the Northern Hemisphere, including parts of Iceland and Spain, fall within the path of totality.

On August 12, the Moon’s shadow will first cross over the Arctic Circle from northern Russia and then track along the eastern side of Greenland. At about 5:45 p.m. local time in Iceland (17:45 Universal Time), the country’s western fringes—including the Snæfellsnes peninsula, shown in the Landsat image above—will begin to experience totality. The greatest eclipse will occur near this sparsely populated peninsula when the Moon appears the largest and covers more of the Sun.

A map shows the path of totality of the solar eclipse on August 12, 2026, arcing across Greenland, Iceland, the North Atlantic, and Spain.
The path of totality of the solar eclipse on August 12, 2026, spans Greenland, Iceland, and Spain. The base imagery for the map comes from Blue Marble: Next Generation, with data from Black Marble shown in the path of totality. Blue Marble is built from scenes captured by MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer), while Black Marble is based on observations by the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) day-night band.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison

The Snæfellsjökull volcano on the western end of the peninsula is covered in ice and last erupted about 1,800 years ago. It is the highlight of a national park of the same name, where people are expected to visit to view the eclipse. The stratovolcano even has a literary claim to fame: in Jules Verne’s A Journey to the Center of the Earth, characters venture underground through its crater, later emerging in an eruption of Stromboli, in Italy. In 2025, a broader area of the peninsula was designated a UNESCO biosphere reserve, containing over 70 percent of Iceland’s flora and an agglomeration of volcanic landscapes, wetlands, and grasslands.

From Iceland, the eclipse shadow, or umbra, progresses across the North Atlantic and reaches northern Spain shortly before sunset. It runs east-southeast across the country, much like the Ebro River (Río Ebro), seen in the Landsat image below.

Meandering rivers cut through dark green mountain ridges, across agricultural land, and near several developed areas in northern Spain.

The Ebro River, meandering across northern Spain in this image acquired with the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 8 on July 21, 2026, is in the path of totality of the August 2026 solar eclipse.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison

The upper Ebro emerges from rugged terrain in Parque Natural de Montes Obarenes-San Zadornil, where it carves canyons and gorges through the eastern foothills of the Cantabrian Mountains. It then meanders through La Rioja, a region known for its vineyards. About 400 kilometers (250 miles) away, the river reaches a delta on the Mediterranean coast between Barcelona and Valencia.

Based on satellite measurements of cloud cover in August over several decades, viewers in Spain have a higher likelihood than those in Iceland of getting a clear look at the eclipse. And despite limited viewing opportunities in the path of totality, the rest of Europe, parts of Africa, Canada, and the northern and northeastern U.S. will experience a partial eclipse.

NASA Earth Observatory images and map by Michala Garrison, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey, base imagery from Blue Marble: Next Generation and Black Marble, and eclipse path data from Xavier Jubier. Story by Lindsey Doermann.

Downloads

A peninsula in Iceland stretches across the image to the left. A prominent glacier-capped volcano sits near its western end.

July 25, 2026

JPEG (14.69 MB)

A map shows the path of totality of the solar eclipse on August 12, 2026, arcing across Greenland, Iceland, the North Atlantic, and Spain.

August 12, 2026

JPEG (1.92 MB)

Meandering rivers cut through dark green mountain ridges, across agricultural land, and near several developed areas in northern Spain.


July 21, 2026

JPEG (34.46 MB)

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“Pluto Never Stops Surprising Us”: SwRI Scientists Find Evidence of Liquid Nitrogen on Pluto

✇The Debrief
By: Christopher Plain

A Southwest Research Institute (SwRI)-led research team has discovered evidence of liquid nitrogen rising to the surface of Pluto through cracks in the dwarf planet’s heart-shaped glacier, Sputnik Planitia.

According to the researchers behind the detection, the liquid nitrogen evidence captured by NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft is the first evidence of any liquid flowing on Pluto. They also suggest that the discovery could help scientists better understand other solar system features such as the geysers on Neptune’s moon Triton.

New Horizons Mission Gave First Hint of Liquid Nitrogen on Pluto

When New Horizons captured images of Pluto’s surface between 2015 and 2016, it gathered extensive imagery of a massive surface feature called Sputnik Planitia. Larger than Texas and Oklahoma combined, the frozen nitrogen lake has long fascinated planetary scientists.

When examining the spacecraft’s photos, researchers spotted thin, dark, linear features separating the city-sized geologic convection cells on Sputnik Planitia’s northernmost portions. Critically, the thinner, separating features were more diffuse than the larger ones. Although some previous studies suggested that Pluto may have a liquid water ocean beneath its frozen outer shell, the surface temperatures would prevent any of that water from flowing on the surface long enough to cause the features.

Some theories proposed a liquid nitrogen explanation for the thinner features, even though the research team behind the discovery said that Pluto’s atmospheric and thermal conditions make liquid rain physically impossible. Still, the team notes, the surface patterns on Pluto’s northern Sputnik Planitia “have been darkened in ways that resemble glacial features on Earth that have been wetted by water rain or the subsurface emergence of liquids to the surface.”

To better understand the data, SwRI Associate Vice President and principal investigator on the New Horizons mission, Dr. Alan Stern, reexamined the data, focusing on similar features on Earth.

Sputnik Planitia Evidence “Very Similar” to Greenland Ice Sheet Features

To start, Dr. Stern and colleagues compared the New Horizons images with Earth imagery collected by NASA’s Landsat 9. The researchers focused on the Greenland Ice Sheet, since similar surface features caused by liquid water separating ice and snow have been previously observed.

When focusing on topography, the team said the two regions appeared “very similar.” This similarity suggested that subsurface liquids in the form of nitrogen were rising to the surface and wetting areas of Sputnik Planitia’s nitrogen ice.

liquid nitrogen on Pluto
Pluto’s northern Sputnik Planitia glacier (in the western or left side of Pluto’s brightheart) is shown here in a color mosaic made from New Horizons imagery. The direction of north is shown on the image. The image is ~ 700 x 350 kilometers across. The red box has been added to show most of the region containing dark features attributed to the wetting of the glacier by liquid nitrogen sourced from a “basal melting” process beneath the glacier. (2026). Image Credit: NASA/John Hopkins APL/Southwest Research Institute.

SwRI Principal Scientist Dr. Kelsi Singer, one of the study’s co-authors, said Sputnik Planitia’s surface is “quite young” in geological terms, with most estimates placing it at less than one million years. As a result, the dark, thin surface features must have formed during that short window of time.

“Pluto has many unique terrains seen nowhere else in the solar system, and this area of Sputnik Planitia is one of them,” Dr Singer explained. “Its surface provides a different set of conditions compared to what we are used to on Earth, and exploring that allows us to better understand how materials behave in environments that are difficult to produce on Earth.”

To support the visual evidence of liquid nitrogen on Pluto, Dr. Orkan Umurhan, a senior research scientist at the SETI Institute, oversaw the creation of computer models designed to simulate the dwarf planet’s local environment. According to the study authors, the models “show that nitrogen ice at the base of Pluto’s kilometers-deep Sputnik glacier can melt, forming liquid nitrogen.”

liquid nitrogen on Pluto similar to Greenland ice sheet
Dark, narrow surface features have been identified here in areas in Greenland where liquid water darkens the ice and snow in a manner analogous to what is now believed to perhaps be occurring on northern Sputnik Planitia on Pluto due to present or recent liquid nitrogen there. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins /Southwest Research Institute.

The same models also revealed that buoyancy and pressure from underneath can cause liquid nitrogen to migrate to Pluto’s surface via a series of small conduits that resemble lava or geyser tubes. Although the dwarf planet’s distance from the Sun makes it an extremely frigid environment, the models also suggested that once liquid nitrogen reaches Pluto’s surface, it can maintain liquid form long enough to flow down the nitrogen glacier slopes and cause the features seen in the images.

“Pluto Never Stops Surprising Us”

When discussing the significance of the findings, Dr. Umurhan pointed to the study’s  “tantalizing picture that it promotes,” including potentially motivating a further examination of solid-state nitrogen physics at very low temperatures.

“Specifically, it’s important to examine the physics taking place in solid nitrogen materials under stress and strain, which can cause them to melt,” the study author explained, adding that these processes “have never been studied in real detail in the laboratory.”

The SwRI-led team also noted that over half of Pluto remains unmapped in high resolution, meaning there is still a lot of room for future discoveries. This includes further mapping of the other Kuiper Belt planets “to determine if similar processes are occurring elsewhere in that region of the solar system.”

Finally, the SwRI-led team said the findings could offer some assistance in explaining other events across the solar system, such as the geysers observed by NASA’s Voyager 2 on Neptune’s moon Triton.

“Pluto never stops surprising us, and this new result certainly does that,” Stern concluded. “In addition to suggesting that liquids have recently expressed themselves on Pluto’s surface, it also suggests a new kind of time-variable feature on Pluto.”

The study “Evidence for possible N2 basal flow beneath Pluto’s northern Sputnik Planitia” was published in The Planetary Science Journal.

Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and has spent the last six years as Associate News Editor and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him at christopher@thedebrief.org

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Playing the Moon Game 

✇NASA
A satellite image shows part of Alaska’s Katmai National Park. A chain of snowy mountain peaks stretches from the bottom left corner to the right side of the image. The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes is a long, tan-colored feature runs toward the northwest in the upper-left.
September 29, 2025

In preparing to visit the Moon’s surface, soon-to-be lunar explorers in NASA’s Apollo program first ventured into a variety of unfamiliar landscapes on Earth. A couple of these trips, in the summers of 1965 and 1966, took astronauts to Alaska’s remote Katmai National Park for simulations of field geology in Moon-like environments.

In one exercise, which they called “playing the Moon game,” pairs of astronauts were placed at unfamiliar field sites and asked to pretend as if they were on the Moon. By the account of William Phinney, Apollo’s science training coordinator, they were tasked with collecting representative geologic samples and practicing how to communicate their observations to scientists.

A detailed satellite image centers on the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes in Alaska. The tan-colored feature runs southeast-to-northwest. Snowy peaks appear on the right side of the image, and green, forested valleys fill the left side.
September 29, 2025

The Alaskan setting for the Moon game was an unusual volcanic landscape called the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. The valley is full of debris deposited by the 1912 eruption of Novarupta—the largest volcanic event on Earth in the 20th century.

The images above, acquired on September 29, 2025, with the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9, show the massive ash flow deposited by Novarupta. The layer measures up to 660 feet (200 meters) thick and was emplaced at a searing 1,380 degrees Fahrenheit (750 degrees Celsius). 

The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, shown in the 1917 photo below, is so named because of the abundance of fumaroles—gas and steam-emitting vents—that filled the valley for a decade after the eruption. A few hundred persisted more than 10 years, with some lasting until the 1990s.

Three people stand in the foreground of this black-and-white photo, silhouetted by steam coming from a fumarole. A dark, barren landscape dotted with plumes of rising steam extends into the background.
1917

Scientists initially suspected that the monster eruption occurred at Mount Katmai, a neighboring volcano with a large caldera located 6 miles (10 kilometers) east of Novarupta’s dome. However, they later determined that the eruption actually occurred at Novarupta—whose name means “new eruption”—after stealing magma from beneath Katmai. As the magma chamber emptied, Katmai collapsed, forming the 2.5-mile-wide (4-kilometer-wide) caldera present today.

The volcanic landscape in the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes is far fresher than the ancient lava flows that formed the Moon’s volcanic features. But for the Apollo astronauts, it offered an “excellent opportunity to view volcanic materials and landforms in nearly pristine condition,” Phinney wrote. They studied evidence of fumaroles and examined vertical sections of the deposits where streams had eroded deep gorges.

This photo shows a broad valley filled with tan-colored volcanic material in the foreground and snowy mountains in the background. The ashy volcanic deposits create a mostly flat valley floor, except where steep-sided chasms formed by erosion run through it.
June 9, 1991

Researchers continue to visit this Alaskan wilderness in search of clues that could help decipher the geology of the Moon and Mars. In 2024, the Goddard Instrument Field Team (GIFT) trekked to the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes to study its icy volcanic landscape. Like the valley, Mars contains glaciers and ice sheets layered with dust and ash, a dynamic and difficult-to-interpret environment.

Advancing lunar science, the GIFT team also collected samples from rock formations comparable to the Moon’s Gruithuisen Domes. These mysterious features are made of hardened lava with a different composition than the surrounding rock. With more to learn about our nearest celestial neighbor, the spirit of the Moon game lives on in the 21st century.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Photos from National Geographic Society Katmai expeditions photographs, Archives and Special Collections, Consortium Library, University of Alaska Anchorage, and from the U.S. Geological Survey Volcano Hazards Program. Story by Lindsey Doermann. 

Downloads

A satellite image shows part of Alaska’s Katmai National Park. A chain of snowy mountain peaks stretches from the bottom left corner to the right side of the image. The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes is a long, tan-colored feature runs toward the northwest in the upper-left.

September 29, 2025

JPEG (2.64 MB)

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Playing the Moon Game 

✇NASA Science
By: Lauren Dauphin
A satellite image shows part of Alaska’s Katmai National Park. A chain of snowy mountain peaks stretches from the bottom left corner to the right side of the image. The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes is a long, tan-colored feature runs toward the northwest in the upper-left.
September 29, 2025

In preparing to visit the Moon’s surface, soon-to-be lunar explorers in NASA’s Apollo program first ventured into a variety of unfamiliar landscapes on Earth. A couple of these trips, in the summers of 1965 and 1966, took astronauts to Alaska’s remote Katmai National Park for simulations of field geology in Moon-like environments.

In one exercise, which they called “playing the Moon game,” pairs of astronauts were placed at unfamiliar field sites and asked to pretend as if they were on the Moon. By the account of William Phinney, Apollo’s science training coordinator, they were tasked with collecting representative geologic samples and practicing how to communicate their observations to scientists.

A detailed satellite image centers on the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes in Alaska. The tan-colored feature runs southeast-to-northwest. Snowy peaks appear on the right side of the image, and green, forested valleys fill the left side.
September 29, 2025

The Alaskan setting for the Moon game was an unusual volcanic landscape called the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. The valley is full of debris deposited by the 1912 eruption of Novarupta—the largest volcanic event on Earth in the 20th century.

The images above, acquired on September 29, 2025, with the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9, show the massive ash flow deposited by Novarupta. The layer measures up to 660 feet (200 meters) thick and was emplaced at a searing 1,380 degrees Fahrenheit (750 degrees Celsius). 

The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, shown in the 1917 photo below, is so named because of the abundance of fumaroles—gas and steam-emitting vents—that filled the valley for a decade after the eruption. A few hundred persisted more than 10 years, with some lasting until the 1990s.

Three people stand in the foreground of this black-and-white photo, silhouetted by steam coming from a fumarole. A dark, barren landscape dotted with plumes of rising steam extends into the background.
1917

Scientists initially suspected that the monster eruption occurred at Mount Katmai, a neighboring volcano with a large caldera located 6 miles (10 kilometers) east of Novarupta’s dome. However, they later determined that the eruption actually occurred at Novarupta—whose name means “new eruption”—after stealing magma from beneath Katmai. As the magma chamber emptied, Katmai collapsed, forming the 2.5-mile-wide (4-kilometer-wide) caldera present today.

The volcanic landscape in the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes is far fresher than the ancient lava flows that formed the Moon’s volcanic features. But for the Apollo astronauts, it offered an “excellent opportunity to view volcanic materials and landforms in nearly pristine condition,” Phinney wrote. They studied evidence of fumaroles and examined vertical sections of the deposits where streams had eroded deep gorges.

This photo shows a broad valley filled with tan-colored volcanic material in the foreground and snowy mountains in the background. The ashy volcanic deposits create a mostly flat valley floor, except where steep-sided chasms formed by erosion run through it.
June 9, 1991

Researchers continue to visit this Alaskan wilderness in search of clues that could help decipher the geology of the Moon and Mars. In 2024, the Goddard Instrument Field Team (GIFT) trekked to the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes to study its icy volcanic landscape. Like the valley, Mars contains glaciers and ice sheets layered with dust and ash, a dynamic and difficult-to-interpret environment.

Advancing lunar science, the GIFT team also collected samples from rock formations comparable to the Moon’s Gruithuisen Domes. These mysterious features are made of hardened lava with a different composition than the surrounding rock. With more to learn about our nearest celestial neighbor, the spirit of the Moon game lives on in the 21st century.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Photos from National Geographic Society Katmai expeditions photographs, Archives and Special Collections, Consortium Library, University of Alaska Anchorage, and from the U.S. Geological Survey Volcano Hazards Program. Story by Lindsey Doermann. 

Downloads

A satellite image shows part of Alaska’s Katmai National Park. A chain of snowy mountain peaks stretches from the bottom left corner to the right side of the image. The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes is a long, tan-colored feature runs toward the northwest in the upper-left.

September 29, 2025

JPEG (2.64 MB)

References & Resources

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Scoria Cones on Earth and Mars
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The post Playing the Moon Game  appeared first on NASA Science.

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