On her morning walk to school, a high schooler notices a patch of greenery in her neighbor’s yard.
On her morning walk to school, a high schooler notices a patch of greenery in her neighbor’s yard. But the plants don’t look quite as green and healthy as she thinks they should. To see if she’s right, she puts down her backpack and pulls out STELLA, a DIY gizmo not much bigger than a smartphone.
She points STELLA at the foliage and, at the press of a button, a small screen displays a numerical readout of a dozen or so measurements – things like temperature, humidity, and light intensity. Like a set of vital signs at an annual checkup, the numbers can help determine the plant’s overall health.
It may sound like Star Trek’s fictional “tricorder,” but STELLA – short for NASA’s Science and Technology Education for Land / Life Assessment – is a real tool intended for students, educators, and citizen scientists. The handheld, do-it-yourself gadget can scan, record, and analyze features of the environment, such as plant health. While not perfectly comparable to the tricorder, STELLA does exhibit some parallels to its distant sci-fi cousin.
For instance, STELLA measurements of leaf temperature and air temperature – and the difference between them – can hint at how well-watered a plant is, said Paul Mirel, chief engineer for the project. Since 2019, the Landsat science project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has been supporting Mirel and others in the development of STELLA because it is a valuable tool to demonstrate how the imaging instruments on Landsat satellites work.
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Image: STELLA (short for NASA’s Science and Technology Education for Land / Life Assessment) is a handheld, do-it-yourself gadget that can scan, record, and analyze features of the environment, such as plant health. An example STELLA is shown here during testing at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. In this test experiment, the two plants were given different amounts of water. STELLA readings were taken regularly to monitor and compare the plants' relative health. (Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Sophia Rentschler)
