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Today — 24 July 2026NASA Breaking News

A Million-Panel Project

✇NASA Breaking News
24 July 2026 at 00:01
June 16, 2024
June 6, 2026

A dry, tan-colored valley containing a few circular irrigated fields runs roughly north-south through the image.
A dry, tan-colored valley containing a few circular irrigated fields runs roughly north-south through the image.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin

Grid-like arrays of solar panels cover parts of a valley floor in a brown, dry-looking area of Utah.
Grid-like arrays of solar panels cover parts of a valley floor in a brown, dry-looking area of Utah.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin

A dry, tan-colored valley containing a few circular irrigated fields runs roughly north-south through the image.
A dry, tan-colored valley containing a few circular irrigated fields runs roughly north-south through the image.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin
Grid-like arrays of solar panels cover parts of a valley floor in a brown, dry-looking area of Utah.
Grid-like arrays of solar panels cover parts of a valley floor in a brown, dry-looking area of Utah.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin

June 16, 2024

June 6, 2026


The nearly one million photovoltaic panels of a solar energy and battery storage facility in Utah appear in the right image, acquired with the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 8 on June 6, 2026. The same sensor captured the left image on June 16, 2024. NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin.

Historically, central Utah’s Castle Valley has been a coal hub, with mining operations on the slopes of the Wasatch Plateau to the west active since the late 1800s. A different energy development arrived in the region in June 2026, when a large solar power and battery storage plant came online in the sunny valley about 130 miles (210 kilometers) southeast of Salt Lake City.

The recently constructed Green River Energy Center, seen in the Landsat 8 image above (right), features nearly one million solar panels and roughly 500 batteries on several square miles of previously undeveloped land. The facility has 400 megawatts of solar-generating capacity with another 400 megawatts of battery storage. That places it among the many utility-scale solar power and battery storage projects that the U.S. Energy Information Administration expects to be plugged into the country’s grid in 2026.

The Utah facility is slated to supply power to Salt Lake City and other areas across the state, according to news reports, and project staff estimate it could produce enough electricity for more than 100,000 homes. With its integrated battery storage, the plant has the potential to generate power at all hours, even when the Sun isn’t shining. And the Green River Energy Center can build on Castle Valley’s energy legacy by utilizing existing transmission lines originally built for coal-fired power plants in the area.

Though Utah adopted coal as its state rock and has long relied on it for energy, other sources, such as solar and geothermal, are becoming larger parts of the state’s energy mix. In 2025, coal fueled about half of the state’s electricity generation, down from about 75 percent in 2015. Meanwhile, solar grew to account for about 14 percent of generation in 2025, up from nearly zero a decade before. Satellite data can be useful to planners and policymakers involved in energy transitions for assessing the potential of renewable energy systems and tracking their adoption and performance.

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

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A dry, tan-colored valley containing a few circular irrigated fields runs roughly north-south through the image.

June 16, 2024

JPEG (9.90 MB)

Grid-like arrays of solar panels cover parts of a valley floor in a brown, dry-looking area of Utah.

June 6, 2026

JPEG (4.50 MB)

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Before yesterdayNASA Breaking News

The Birthplace of the United States

✇NASA Breaking News
3 July 2026 at 00:00
2013-06-01 00:00:00
June 1, 2013
2013-06-01 00:00:00

Editor’s note: In honor of America’s 250th birthday, Earth Observatory is revisiting stories about the landscapes that helped shape U.S. history. The images and text on this page were originally published on July 4, 2017. Explore the full collection here.

Situated between the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers, Philadelphia was founded in 1682 by William Penn as the seat of a Quaker colony. Later, its location just upstream of the Delaware Bay and Atlantic Ocean made it an industrial, commercial, and cultural hub of the American colonies.

When the area’s original inhabitants, the Lenni Lenape (Delaware) Indians, lived here, much of the land was forested. Swedish and Dutch settlers had already traveled in the area when Penn finally came to it and signed a treaty with the Lenape to establish a city. He called his colony—now the state of Pennsylvania—Sylvania, after its sylvan, wooded appearance. Current-day Philadelphia had “a high and dry land next to the water, with a shore ornamented with a fine view of pine trees growing upon it,” according to a historical account.

More than 300 years after Penn’s arrival, this landscape remains verdant, despite its urban development. The natural-color image above shows Philadelphia and the surrounding area as it appeared on June 1, 2013, when the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite passed overhead.

Nearly a hundred years after Philadelphia was established, the Founding Fathers of the United States met in this thriving city roughly at the geographic center of the 13 colonies. It was here that they debated, composed, and signed the documents that would become the blueprints of the American government. In 1776, they signed the Declaration of Independence in Carpenter’s Hall, not far from the red-brick building that then housed Pennsylvania’s colonial government; in 1787, they signed the Constitution in the same place. (Carpenter’s is now known as Independence Hall.) Between 1781 and 1788, it was also the seat of the U.S. government.

Today, Philadelphia is the fifth largest city in the U.S., with more than 6 million people living in its metropolitan area. The city saw its heyday as a manufacturing hub in the 1800s. Currently, its largest sectors include education and health services.

Traces of the city’s history remain embedded in its landscape. A belt of large, tall buildings makes up Center City, the area around Independence Hall. To the south lies a dense grid of smaller houses—South Philadelphia, home to the city’s Italian Market. At one point, this was a satellite town to the city; the two merged in 1854, when the area’s population surged. It remains a diverse area today, home to a large African American community, as well as the remnants of once sizable Italian, Irish, and Jewish immigrant populations.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Jesse Allen, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Pola Lem.

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2013-06-01 00:00:00

June 1, 2013

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June 1, 2013

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