Acquired March 9, 2010 (top), and March 8, 2009 (bottom), these false-color images show changes brought about by heavy rains in 2010, compared to the same time of year in 2009.Vegetation appears bright green. Clouds appear sky blue. Water ranges from electric blue to navy. Bare ground appears tan.

Vestiges of Medieval Brittany mingle with signs of modern civilization in this simulated natural color satellite image of Chateaubriant, France.

Dr. Joanne Simpson (1923–2010) pores over reams of images of tropical clouds filmed during flights across the tropical Pacific. The photos and her hand-drawn maps of cloud formations became the foundation for her groundbreaking “hot towers” hypothesis about atmospheric circulation in the tropics.

Phytoplankton swirled across the Arabian Sea on February 18, 2010, drawn into thin green ribbons by turbulent eddies.

Acquired February 15, 2010, this true-color image shows emerald-green irrigated fields along the Orange River, which separates Namibia from the Republic of South Africa.

This photo shows the GOES-P satellite launching from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on March 4, 2010.

Acquired March 4, 2010, this true-color image shows a thick dust plume stretching from Saudi Arabia to Iran, obscuring part of the Persian Gulf.

Smoke plumes and apparent damage to a bridge are visible in this astronaut photograph of Concepción, Chile, following the magnitude 8.8 earthquake on February 27, 2010.

Based on data from NASA’s Landsat 5 satellite, these natural-color (photo-like) images document the growth of the Hobet mine in Boone County, West Virginia, as it expands from ridge to ridge between 1984 to 2009.

This map of topography and water depth reveals subduction’s influence on the West Coast of South America near the epicenter of the 8.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Chile on February 27, 2010.

This detailed astronaut photograph features surface currents illuminated by mirror-like reflections of sunlight off the waters around the Malée Atoll in the Maldive Islands.

Acquired February 18, 2010, this true-color image shows Lake Acraman and surrounding saltpans in South Australia. The sprawling saltpans appear off-white, and the largely bare soils appear in shades of orange and brown.

This series of true color satellite images show the massive B-09B iceberg on a collision course with the Mertz Glacier Tongue in East Antarctica. The collision broke the ice tongue away from the glacier, creating another vast iceberg.

A massive eruption of Montserrat’s Soufrière Hills Volcano covered large portions of the island in debris in mid-February 2010.

This collection of image highlights several of the Earth’s vital signs monitored by NASA’s Terra mission, which began observing our planet a decade ago this month.

This detailed image, taken by the Advanced Land Imager on NASA’s EO-1 satellite on March 7, 2007, illustrates how the steep mountains and deep ravines contributed to a flooding disaster in February 2010.

Acquired February 21, 2010, these true- and false-color images of British Columbia show fog filling mountain valleys northeast of Vancouver. In the false-color image, vegetation appears bright green, snow appears bright turquoise, and fog appears as a very pale, muted blue-green.

Night-shining clouds high in the atmosphere over the southern polar region appear in shades of blue and orange in this astronaut photo from January 30, 2010.

Acquired February 15, 2010, this true-color image shows the Super Pit Mine in Western Australia and part of the neighboring metropolitan area of Kalgoorlie.

The Sahara Desert is visible through the un-shuttered windows of the new viewing cupola on the International Space Station in this astronaut photo. A second picture looks into the “ new wing” from outside.