When the space shuttle goes up, you almost always hear about it on the national news. NASA sends many other rockets into space that you usually don't hear about, but a lot of them carry satellites that you will eventually benefit from.

The nation's newest environmental satellite was launched a few weeks ago. It's called GOES-12, and it can take images of clouds, measure temperature and moisture in the atmosphere, and monitor space weather from a vantage point 22,300 miles above the equator - that's about a tenth of the way to the moon and far enough out to take full disk images of the earth. Here's the first full-disk image from the new satellite, taken August 17. Of course, the satellite can get close-ups as well, here focusing on Tropical Storm Chantal which was over the Caribbean Sea at the time.

With weather satellites such as GOES-12, NASA handles the development, launch, and initial check in orbit, then turns the reigns over to NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which manages the data the satellite collects. GOES-12 won't be used on a full-time basis right away - instead, it's being stored in orbit, ready to replace one of the older weather satellites whenever it's needed.