ECOSTRESS (ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station)

NASA’s thermal infrared imaging mission mounted on the ISS. Measures plant water-stress + evapotranspiration at 70 m resolution — fine enough to see individual agricultural fields and urban heat islands, with ISS’s variable overpass times catching the diurnal cycle that sun-synchronous thermal sensors miss.

What it sees

• 5 thermal infrared bands in the 8-12 µm atmospheric window — designed for accurate land-surface temperature + emissivity retrievals
• 70 m ground pixel; ~400 km swath
• ISS orbit → samples different times-of-day at the same target across many overpasses → builds up diurnal temperature cycle picture
• Operational since 2018; restarted after a 2024 hiatus

Why it matters

• 70 m thermal resolution is exceptional. Landsat 8/9 TIRS-2 thermal is 100 m (and resampled to 30 m); MODIS thermal is 1 km. ECOSTRESS sees individual fields.
• Diurnal cycle sampling — sun-synchronous satellites observe each pixel always at the same local time; ISS samples randomly across the day. Critical for plant-stress detection (afternoon stress vs morning recovery).
• PT-JPL + ALEXI-U evapotranspiration algorithms are operational products — directly used by USDA + state-level water managers for irrigation guidance.
• Urban heat islands at neighborhood scale.

Where to get the data

• earthaccess Python: short_name="ECO2LSTE" (LST), ECO3ETPTJPL (ET PT-JPL), ECO3ETALEXIU (ET ALEXI-U), ECO4ESIPTJPL (Evaporative Stress)
• LP DAAC AppEEARS: best for non-programmer access — point sampling, area sampling, format conversion
• ECOSTRESS Mission Web: ecostress.jpl.nasa.gov

What it enables

• Agricultural water-stress detection (evapotranspiration drop → irrigation guidance)
• Urban heat-island mapping at neighborhood scale (environmental-justice work)
• Drought impact mapping (paired with SMAP soil moisture + GPM precipitation)
• Volcanic + geothermal hotspot detection
• Wildfire post-burn surface temperature recovery
• Crop yield forecasting (ET as a productivity proxy)
• Forest health + plant stress under climate change

Gotchas

• No coverage above ±51.6° latitude. ISS orbit caps; boreal forests + high-Arctic excluded.
• Variable revisit cadence. Could be 3 days at a given target; could be 10. Not predictable without checking the ISS overpass schedule.
• Daylight + nighttime overpasses both occur — be explicit in analysis (day vs night LST).
• 70 m thermal at ISS altitudes is at the SNR limit. Single-pixel noise is non-trivial; aggregate to ~150 m or larger for analysis-grade work.
• Cloud screening removes a lot of data. Daily-effective scenes are sparse in cloudy regions.
• ALEXI-U and PT-JPL ET products use different algorithms. They can disagree by 20-30% in absolute magnitude; pick one and stick with it for comparison studies.

Related missions

• Landsat 9 (s01 →): TIRS-2 thermal at 100 m; less frequent but global polar coverage.
• MODIS (s04 →): LST at 1 km, daily — coarser but more frequent.
• SBG (Surface Biology and Geology): planned Decadal Survey mission, ~2028+; ECOSTRESS’s institutional successor with hyperspectral + thermal.
• TRISHNA (CNES + ISRO, ~2026): thermal mission with finer spatial sampling.
• SMAP (s13 →): soil moisture — pair with ECOSTRESS for full water-balance picture.

Related datasets