November, 2009  As of the end of October, COSPAS-SARSAT has rescued 144 people in the United States, including 112 at sea, five downed pilots and 27 personal locator beacon rescues this year. COSPAS-SARSAT is an international, humanitarian search and rescue system that uses NOAA’s Search and Rescue Satellite Aided Tracking (or SARSAT) System to detect and locate distress signals from emergency beacons on board aircraft, boats and from handheld personal locator beacons. |
October, 2009
 The world's first weather satellite was launched from Cape Canaveral on April 1, 1960. Named "TIROS" for Television and Infrared Observation Satellite, it demonstrated the advantage of mapping the Earth's cloud cover from space. Today, NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service in Suitland, Md., operates 16 of our nation's weather/environmental satellites. |
September, 2009  The NOAA ESRL South Pole Observatory (SPO), housed within NSF’s Atmospheric Research Observatory (pictured), sits atop a layer of solid ice nearly 2 miles thick. |
August, 2009
 The NOAA ESRL Carbon Cycle Greenhouse Gases group (CCGG ) in Boulder, Colo., collects and analyzes the largest number of carbon dioxide (CO2) samples on Earth — a whopping 16,000-plus each year — as part of the Global Cooperative Air Sampling Network. |
July, 2009  NOAA restored, improved and protected more than 11,200 acres of habitat and opened 623 miles of streams for migrating fish in 2008. |
June, 2009  Approximately 140 NOAA inspectors examine roughly 2.1 billion pounds of seafood in the United States each year. |