Phoenix Satellite Initiative
Funded by NASA to study the urban heat island effect
Videos and Simulations
Climate Change
Climate change and urban heat islands are closely connected. According to NASA, Earth's average temperature is expected to rise 3 to 10 degrees over the next 100 years. The Earth's warming climate can worsen the effects of already-high temperatures in heat island areas. Watch this video from NASA to learn more about the planet's "fever."
Urban Growth
Urban heat islands occur after major changes are made to a landscape, such as buildings and roads replacing land and vegetation. This causes the surface of these landscapes to become dry and warmer than its surrounding rural areas, creating an "island" of heat. Rapid expansion in Tucson, Arizona has greatly contributed to the development of a heat island within the city. Slide the line below to view the urbanization that has occurred in Tucson between 1984 (left) and 2011 (right). The purple color indicates urban growth.
Space Debris
Waste and litter are problems that exist even in space! Nonfunctional spacecrafts, abandoned launch vehicle stages, mission-related debris and fragmented debris are all elements of space waste. NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office tracks more than 500,000 pieces of debris as it orbits the Earth, but there are millions of pieces of debris not large enough to be tracked. Space junk poses a potential threat to human spacecrafts, but luckily NASA has guidelines in place to prevent spacecrafts from colliding with debris.
The Phoenix CubeSat will deorbit naturally and burn up in Earth's upper atmosphere in order to avoid contributing to the amount of space junk. Below is an animation created by NASA that simulates the movement and the amount of space debris that currently orbits Earth.