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Goddard Space Flight Center

NASA's Maryland-based centre operating Earth-observation missions, including the Black Marble nighttime-lights product.

Last refreshed: 18 May 2026

Key Question

How does a NASA Maryland facility document Cuba's grid collapse?

Timeline for Goddard Space Flight Center

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Common Questions
What is NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center?
Goddard is NASA's principal Earth-observation and space-Science facility, established in 1959 in Greenbelt, Maryland. With around 10,000 personnel, it operates the James Webb Space Telescope Mission Control, the Hubble Space Telescope ground segment, and Earth Science Division programmes.Source: NASA
Where is Goddard Space Flight Center located?
Goddard is located in Greenbelt, Maryland, established in 1959 as NASA's principal Earth-observation and space-Science facility.Source: NASA
Does Goddard produce the data behind Cuba blackout coverage?
Yes. Goddard's Earth Science Division hosts the NASA Black Marble team, whose nighttime-lights data product underpinned Bloomberg's May 2026 analysis finding Cuban nighttime light down by up to 50 per cent.Source: Bloomberg

Background

The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, established in 1959 and located in Greenbelt, Maryland, is the agency's principal facility for Earth-observation and space-Science missions. With approximately 10,000 personnel including civil servants and contractors, Goddard operates a portfolio that includes the James Webb Space Telescope Mission Control, the Hubble Space Telescope ground segment, and the Earth Science Division programmes that produce calibrated atmospheric, oceanographic and land-surface data products.

Goddard's Earth Science Division hosts the NASA Black Marble team, which produces the calibrated nighttime-lights data product from VIIRS Day-Night Band imagery aboard the JPSS satellite series. Black Marble outputs underpinned Bloomberg's May 2026 satellite analysis of Cuba, which found nighttime light fell by up to 50 per cent across the island, with Santiago de Cuba and Holguín worst affected.

Goddard's editorial relevance to the Cuba-dispatch topic is structural: as a US federal facility producing openly accessible Earth-observation data, it is the institutional source of the satellite imagery that documents Cuba's grid collapse with primary-source weight. The centre coordinates with NOAA on JPSS operations and with the Earth Observation Group at the Colorado School of Mines on derived data products like the Atlas of Energy Poverty.