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At least 199 records · Page 11
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2017

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mission: Continuing a Record of Exploration from Mars Orbit

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has been on station in its low altitude, sun-synchronous, primary science orbit since September 2006 performing both scientific and Mars programmatic support functions. The spacecraft is a very capable remote sensing science platform carrying six science payloads supporting seven investigations and a UHF telecommunications radio (Electra) for surface relay. Developed to support a mix of nadir mapping and targeted, highresolution surface observations, the spacecraft’s powerful telecommunications and command & data handling (C&DH) subsystems communicate an average of 16 hours a day with the Deep Space Network (DSN). To date, more than 300 TB of scientific data has been returned to Earth. All of the original science payloads are active with standard and new observing modes contributing to the advancement of Mars science through peer-reviewed paper publications and the timely dissemination of their data to the science community as a whole. Results from the science teams have revealed an amazing diversity of ancient aqueous environments and ongoing surface change is evident through gully formation, avalanches, and cratering. Extending the MRO-MGS climate record to a decade of Mars years is contributing to a better understanding of current atmospheric and polar processes. In addition to its fundamental scientific objectives, MRO is a critical element of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program (MEP) providing needed infrastructure support for landed and future missions. Using its Electra telecommunications payload, MRO provides landers and rovers critical event coverage during their entry, descent, and landing (EDL) phases and UHF relay support once they are on the Martian surface. MRO’s high-resolution imagers are used to scout potential landing sites and certify safe zones for landing. As MRO begins its Fourth Extended Mission, the spacecraft remains fully capable of carrying out an ambitious science observing plan and the programmatic tasks assigned to it. In addition to highlighting recent discoveries of the mission, this paper describes recent challenges the spacecraft engineers have faced in flight and the plans for extending spacecraft life well into the 2020’s.

Tamppari, Leslie K.↗
NASA NTRS2005

NASA Remote Sensing Data in Earth Sciences: Processing, Archiving, Distribution, Applications at the GES DISC

The NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) is one of the major Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) archiving and distributing remote sensing data from the NASA's Earth Observing System. In addition to providing just data, the GES DISC/DAAC has developed various value-adding processing services. A particularly useful service is data processing a t the DISC (i.e., close to the input data) with the users' algorithms. This can take a number of different forms: as a configuration-managed algorithm within the main processing stream; as a stand-alone program next to the on-line data storage; as build-it-yourself code within the Near-Archive Data Mining (NADM) system; or as an on-the-fly analysis with simple algorithms embedded into the web-based tools (to avoid downloading unnecessary all the data). The existing data management infrastructure at the GES DISC supports a wide spectrum of options: from data subsetting data spatially and/or by parameter to sophisticated on-line analysis tools, producing economies of scale and rapid time-to-deploy. Shifting processing and data management burden from users to the GES DISC, allows scientists to concentrate on science, while the GES DISC handles the data management and data processing at a lower cost. Several examples of successful partnerships with scientists in the area of data processing and mining are presented.

Leptoukh, Gregory G.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Science Target Prioritization Framework for Remote Sensing

Behind the scenes of a remote sensing mission there are complex decision making and planning operations. Streamlining these operations, with a quantitative scientific value framework, aids efficient and optimized science data collection.While there have been previous efforts to quantify the science value for specific science scenarios, our work aims to develop a general framework which can be applied across different scenarios. We describe a pipeline of processes which combines model forecast and observation data, in computational forms, as dictated by the mission objectives set forth by subject matter experts. The framework is described with use cases involving the monitoring of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) concentrations over the Gulf of Mexico and methane concentrations over interior Alaska.

Remote Sensing↗
NASA NTRS2003

The NASA Airborne Earth Science Microwave Imaging Radiometer (AESMIR): A New Sensor for Earth Remote Sensing

The Airborne Earth Science Microwave Imaging Radiometer (AESMIR) is a versatile new airborne imaging radiometer recently developed by NASA. The AESMIR design is unique in that it performs dual-polarized imaging at all standard passive microwave frequency bands (6-89 GHz) using only one sensor headscanner package, providing an efficient solution for Earth remote sensing applications (snow, soil moisture/land parameters, precipitation, ocean winds, sea surface temperature, water vapor, sea ice, etc.). The microwave radiometers themselves will incorporate state-of-the-art receivers, with particular attention given to instrument calibration for the best possible accuracy and sensitivity. The single-package design of AESMIR makes it compatible with high-altitude aircraft platforms such as the NASA ER-2s. The arbitrary 2-axis gimbal can perform conical and cross-track scanning, as well as fixed-beam staring. This compatibility with high-altitude platforms coupled with the flexible scanning configuration, opens up previously unavailable science opportunities for convection/precip/cloud science and co-flying with complementary instruments, as well as providing wider swath coverage for all science applications. By designing AESMIR to be compatible with these high-altitude platforms, we are also compatible with the NASA P-3, the NASA DC-8, C-130s and ground-based deployments. Thus AESMIR can provide low-, mid-, and high- altitude microwave imaging. Parallel filter banks allow AESMIR to simultaneously simulate the exact passbands of multiple satellite radiometers: SSM/I, TMI, AMSR, Windsat, SSMI/S, and the upcoming GPM/GMI and NPOESS/CMIS instruments --a unique capability among aircraft radiometers. An L-band option is also under development, again using the same scanner. With this option, simultaneous imaging from 1.4 to 89 GHz will be feasible. And, all receivers except the sounding channels will be configured for 4-Stokes polarimetric operation using high-speed digital correlators in the near future. The capabilities and unique design features of this new sensor will be described, and example imagery will be presented.

Kim, Edward↗
NASA NTRS2008

The Challenges and Opportunities for International Cooperative Radio Science; Experience with Mars Express and Venus Express Missions

Radio Science is an opportunistic discipline in the sense that the communication link between a spacecraft and its supporting ground station can be used to probe the intervening media remotely. Radio science has recently expanded to greater, cooperative use of international assets. Mars Express and Venus Express are two such cooperative missions managed by the European Space Agency with broad international science participation supported by NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) and ESA's tracking network for deep space missions (ESTRAK). This paper provides an overview of the constraints, opportunities, and lessons learned from international cross support of radio science, and it explores techniques for potentially optimizing the resultant data sets.

MEX↗
NASA NTRS2000

BOREAS RSS-7 Regional LAI and FPAR Images From 10-Day AVHRR-LAC Composites

The BOReal Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study Remote Sensing Science (BOREAS RSS-7) team collected various data sets to develop and validate an algorithm to allow the retrieval of the spatial distribution of Leaf Area Index (LAI) from remotely sensed images. Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) level-4c 10-day composite Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) images produced at CCRS were used to produce images of LAI and the Fraction of Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FPAR) absorbed by plant canopies for the three summer IFCs in 1994 across the BOREAS region. The algorithms were developed based on ground measurements and Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) images. The data are stored in binary image format files.

Hall, Forrest G.↗
NASA NTRS2012

Radar Remote Sensing

This lecture was just a taste of radar remote sensing techniques and applications. Other important areas include Stereo radar grammetry. PolInSAR for volumetric structure mapping. Agricultural monitoring, soil moisture, ice-mapping, etc. The broad range of sensor types, frequencies of observation and availability of sensors have enabled radar sensors to make significant contributions in a wide area of earth and planetary remote sensing sciences. The range of applications, both qualitative and quantitative, continue to expand with each new generation of sensors.

remote sensing↗
NASA NTRS2026

Long-Term Evaluation of Landsat 9 Oli Data Product Uniformity at Focal Plane Module-Boundaries Using Earth Scenes

The uniformity performance characteristic in remote sensing data products is a metric that helps evaluate how an image accurately represents radiometric responses to geophysical variability at the Earth’s surface or within the atmosphere. These uniformity attributes are used in Earth remote sensing science applications such as investigating water quality, land-cover/land-use classifications, and crop health assessments. To ensure these applications perform effectively, it is crucial to maintain and regularly assess the uniformity of calibrated remote sensing data products. In the Landsat missions, data from the onboard radiometric reference Solar diffuser device are used as the standard approach to derive the calibration parameters, ensuring the maintenance of both absolute radiance and radiometric uniformity through quarterly updates. This publication presents an alternative approach that leverages Earth scene data to assess the on-orbit uniformity performance of the Landsat 9 (L9) mission. The analysis characterizes uniformity at a specific set of spatial positions (the focal-plane boundary zones) that are intrinsic to the Operational Land Imager (OLI) focal plane design. By employing these Earth data statistics, the article further explores the temporal trends in the radiometric uniformity results. The results shown in this article demonstrate that for pushbroom imaging design systems with staggered sensor chip focal plane architectures, the co-registered pixels, i.e., overlapping measurements of the same ground target viewed by different detectors, offer a self-contained mechanism for assessing product uniformity. Remarkably, this alternative approach achieves a level of radiometric quality comparable to that delivered by a stable, well-characterized onboard Solar diffuser calibration device. The findings demonstrate the potential and capability of such Earth scene statistics in maintaining radiometric uniformity in calibrated data products to better than 1% (1-sigma) throughout the mission’s operational lifetime.

trend↗
NASA NTRS2000

Future Challenges for Microwave Remote Sensing in Support of Earth Sciences

The presentation will include an overview of leading Earth Science scientific problems that can be addressed using microwave remote sensing, including soil moisture, precipitation, sea salinity, sea surface winds, atmospheric profiling, etc. Using this basis of scientific measurement, the presentation will outline current technological impediments to implementing new measurement system, concentrating on a few example approaches to new technology, such as the conceptual design tradeoffs and capability improvements represented by a fleet of inexpensive nano-satellites, versus geostationary large aperture sensing systems. The outlook for measurement capabilities will be traded against the expected technological hurdles.

Hildebrand, Peter H.↗
NASA NTRS1991

NASA 1990 Multisensor Airborne Campaigns (MACs) for ecosystem and watershed studies

The Multisensor Airborne Campaign (MAC) focus within NASA's former Land Processes research program was conceived to achieve the following objectives: to acquire relatively complete, multisensor data sets for well-studied field sites, to add a strong remote sensing science component to ecology-, hydrology-, and geology-oriented field projects, to create a research environment that promotes strong interactions among scientists within the program, and to more efficiently utilize and compete for the NASA fleet of remote sensing aircraft. Four new MAC's were conducted in 1990: the Oregon Transect Ecosystem Research (OTTER) project along an east-west transect through central Oregon, the Forest Ecosystem Dynamics (FED) project at the Northern Experimental Forest in Howland, Maine, the MACHYDRO project in the Mahantango Creek watershed in central Pennsylvania, and the Walnut Gulch project near Tombstone, Arizona. The OTTER project is testing a model that estimates the major fluxes of carbon, nitrogen, and water through temperate coniferous forest ecosystems. The focus in the project is on short time-scale (days-year) variations in ecosystem function. The FED project is concerned with modeling vegetation changes of forest ecosystems using remotely sensed observations to extract biophysical properties of forest canopies. The focus in this project is on long time-scale (decades to millenia) changes in ecosystem structure. The MACHYDRO project is studying the role of soil moisture and its regulating effects on hydrologic processes. The focus of the study is to delineate soil moisture differences within a basin and their changes with respect to evapotranspiration, rainfall, and streamflow. The Walnut Gulch project is focused on the effects of soil moisture in the energy and water balance of arid and semiarid ecosystems and their feedbacks to the atmosphere via thermal forcing.

Wickland, Diane E.↗
NASA NTRS2001

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will deliver to Mars orbit a payload to conduct remote sensing science observations, characterize sites for future landers, and provide critical telecom/navigation relay capability for follow-on missions.

Mars↗
NASA NTRS2016

Geocam Space: Enhancing Handheld Digital Camera Imagery from the International Space Station for Research and Applications

Handheld astronaut photography of the Earth has been collected from the International Space Station (ISS) since 2000, making it the most temporally extensive remotely sensed dataset from this unique Low Earth orbital platform. Exclusive use of digital handheld cameras to perform Earth observations from the ISS began in 2004. Nadir viewing imagery is constrained by the inclined equatorial orbit of the ISS to between 51.6 degrees North and South latitude, however numerous oblique images of land surfaces above these latitudes are included in the dataset. While unmodified commercial off-the-shelf digital cameras provide only visible wavelength, three-band spectral information of limited quality current cameras used with long (400+ mm) lenses can obtain high quality spatial information approaching 2 meters/ground pixel resolution. The dataset is freely available online at the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth site (http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov), and now comprises over 2 million images. Despite this extensive image catalog, use of the data for scientific research, disaster response, commercial applications and visualizations is minimal in comparison to other data collected from free-flying satellite platforms such as Landsat, Worldview, etc. This is due primarily to the lack of fully-georeferenced data products - while current digital cameras typically have integrated GPS, this does not function in the Low Earth Orbit environment. The Earth Science and Remote Sensing (ESRS) Unit at NASA Johnson Space Center provides training in Earth Science topics to ISS crews, performs daily operations and Earth observation target delivery to crews through the Crew Earth Observations (CEO) Facility on board ISS, and also catalogs digital handheld imagery acquired from orbit by manually adding descriptive metadata and determining an image geographic centerpoint using visual feature matching with other georeferenced data, e.g. Landsat, Google Earth, etc. The lack of full geolocation information native to the data makes it difficult to integrate astronaut photographs with other georeferenced data to facilitate quantitative analysis such as urban land cover/land use classification, change detection, or geologic mapping. The manual determination of image centerpoints is both time and labor-intensive, leading to delays in releasing geolocated and cataloged data to the public, such as the timely use of data for disaster response. The GeoCam Space project was funded by the ISS Program in 2015 to develop an on-orbit hardware and ground-based software system for increasing the efficiency of geolocating astronaut photographs from the ISS (Fig. 1). The Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA Ames Research Center leads the development of both the ground and on-orbit systems in collaboration with the ESRS Unit. The hardware component consists of modified smartphone elements including cameras, central processing unit, wireless Ethernet, and an inertial measurement unit (gyroscopes/accelerometers/magnetometers) reconfigured into a compact unit that attaches to the base of the current Nikon D4 camera - and its replacement, the Nikon D5 - and connects using the standard Nikon peripheral connector or USB port. This provides secondary, side and downward facing cameras perpendicular to the primary camera pointing direction. The secondary cameras observe calibration targets with known internal X, Y, and Z position affixed to the interior of the ISS to determine the camera pose corresponding to each image frame. This information is recorded by the GeoCam Space unit and indexed for correlation to the camera time recorded for each image frame. Data - image, EXIF header, and camera pose information - is transmitted to the ground software system (GeoRef) using the established Ku-band USOS downlink system. Following integration on the ground, the camera pose information provides an initial geolocation estimate for the individual film frame. This new capability represents a significant advance in geolocation from the manual feature-matching approach for both nadir and off-nadir viewing imagery. With the initial geolocation estimate, full georeferencing of an image is completed using the rapid tie-pointing interface in GeoRef, and the resulting data is added to the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth online database in both Geotiff and Keyhole Markup Language (kml) formats. The integration of the GeoRef software component of Geocam Space into the CEO image cataloging workflow is complete, and disaster response imagery acquired by the ISS crew is now fully georeferenced as a standard data product. The on-orbit hardware component (GeoSens) is in final prototyping phase, and is on-schedule for launch to the ISS in late 2016. Installation and routine use of the Geocam Space system for handheld digital camera photography from the ISS is expected to significantly improve the usefulness of this unique dataset for a variety of public- and private-sector applications.

Stefanov, William L.↗
NASA NTRS2010

Ultra Low Temperature Ultra Low Power Instrument Packages for Planetary Surfaces

Achievement of solar system exploration roadmap goals will involve robotic or human deployment and longterm operation of surface science packages remote from human presence, thus requiring autonomous, self-powered operation. The major challenge such packages face will be operating during long periods of darkness in extreme cold potentially without the Pu238 based power and thermal systems available to Apollo era packages (ALSEP). Development of such science payloads will thus require considerable optimization of instrument and subsystem design, packaging and integration for a variety of planetary surface environments in order to support solar system exploration fully. Our work supports this process through the incorporation of low temperature operational components and design strategies which radically minimize power, mass, and cost while maximizing the performance under extreme surface conditions that are in many cases more demanding than those routinely experienced by spacecraft in deep space. Chief instruments/instrument package candidates include those which could provide long-term monitoring of the surface and subsurface environments for fundamental science and human crew safety. The initial attempt to design a 10 instrument environmental monitoring package with a solar/battery based power system led to a package with a unacceptably large mass (500 kg) of which over half was battery mass. In phase 1, a factor of 5 reduction in mass was achieved, first through the introduction of high performance electronics capable of operating at far lower temperature and then through the use of innovative thermal balance strategies involving the use of multi-layer thin materials and gravity-assisted heat pipes. In phase 2, reported here, involves strategies such as universal incorporation of ULT/ULP digital and analog electronics, and distributed or non-conventionally packaged power systems. These strategies will be required to meet the far more challenging thermal requirements of operating through a normal 28 day diurnal cycle. The limited temperature range of efficient battery operation remains the largest obstacle.

Clark, P. E.↗
NASA NTRS2012

Exploring Remote Sensing Products Online with Giovanni for Studying Urbanization

Recently, a Large amount of MODIS land products at multi-spatial resolutions have been integrated into the online system, Giovanni, to support studies on land cover and land use changes focused on Northern Eurasia and Monsoon Asia regions. Giovanni (Goddard Interactive Online Visualization ANd aNalysis Infrastructure) is a Web-based application developed by the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES-DISC) providing a simple and intuitive way to visualize, analyze, and access Earth science remotely-sensed and modeled data. The customized Giovanni Web portals (Giovanni-NEESPI and Giovanni-MAIRS) are created to integrate land, atmospheric, cryospheric, and social products, that enable researchers to do quick exploration and basic analyses of land surface changes and their relationships to climate at global and regional scales. This presentation documents MODIS land surface products in Giovanni system. As examples, images and statistical analysis results on land surface and local climate changes associated with urbanization over Yangtze River Delta region, China, using data in Giovanni are shown.

Shen, Suhung↗
NASA NTRS2017

NExSS/NAI Joint ExoPAG SAG 16 Report on Remote Biosignatures for Exoplanets

Future exoplanet observations will soon focus on the search for life beyond the Solar System. Exoplanet biosignatures to be sought are those with global, potentially detectable, impacts on a planet. Biosignatures occur in an environmental context in which geological, atmospheric, and stellar processes and interactions may work to enhance, suppress or mimic these biosignatures. Thus biosignature scienceis inherently interdisciplinary. Its advance is necessary to inform the design of the next flagship missions that will obtain spectra of habitable extrasolar planets. The NExSS NAI Joint Exoplanet Biosignatures Workshop Without Walls brought together the astrobiology, exoplanet, and mission concept communities to review, discuss, debate, and advance the science of remote detection of planetary biosignatures. The multi-meeting workshop began in June 2016, and was a process that engaged a broad range of experts across the interdisciplinary reaches of NASA's Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS) program, the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI), NASAs Exoplanet Exploration Program (ExEP), and international partners, such as the European Astrobiology Network Association (EANA) and Japans Earth Life Science Institute (ELSI). These groups spanned expertise in astronomy, planetary science, Earth sciences, heliophysics, biology, instrument mission development, and engineering.

Kiang, Nancy Y.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Science Capabilities of the Common Habitat

The Common Habitat is the primary habitable element in a conceptual architecture feasibility study for long-duration space exploration with an eight-person crew size. On lunar or planetary surfaces, the Common Habitat forms the core of a Surface Base Camp. In microgravity, the Common Habitat is the core of the Deep Space Exploration Vehicle (DSEV), an in-space transportation spacecraft. The Common Habitat employs a horizontal orientation that is divided internally into a lower deck, mid deck, and upper deck, roughly separating outfitting into individual, work, and group functions. On a planetary surface, the habitat is incorporated into a base camp, located near the south pole in the case of the Moon. The Mars base camp is currently location agnostic. Each base camp is divided into habitation, landing, resource production, and power zones. In microgravity, the habitat is incorporated into the Deep Space Exploration Vehicle, a vessel capable of transporting the crew within the inner solar system. In addition to crew and teleoperated control of external science assets, the Common Habitat employs a suite of life and physical science laboratory systems to enable it to support science investigations across a variety of destination environments, primarily featuring the Moon and Mars, along with the intervening interplanetary space. Other potential destinations include Near Earth Asteroids and Venus and Earth orbits. Located in the aft starboard section of the Common Habitat mid deck, the life science laboratory supports primarily biology and human research. In its baseline configuration, the laboratory includes horizontal work surfaces, freezers, multiple gloveboxes, sample transfer/exposure capability, large instruments, and reconfigurable ISPR-compatible payload bays. The Medical Care Facility and exercise facility can also support life science research. In the aft port section of the mid deck, the physical science laboratory supports physics, chemistry, materials science, geology, and remote sensing (including astrophysics, heliophysics, Earth science, planetary science, and meteorology). It provides a baseline of similar ISPR-compatible payload bays and adds additional freezers, including those for cryogenic sample storage, a remote sensing workstation, more gloveboxes, also with sample transfer/exposure, combustion chambers, fluid mechanics chambers, and a gas chromatograph. It leverages the Command & Control Center for teleoperations of mobile science assets. Both laboratories are highly modular, with the ability to swap out both payloads and instruments on an as-needed basis. The integrated science outfitting of the Common Habitat positions its crew to contribute to all of NASA’s Moon to Mars science objectives and extend human understanding into the inner solar system.

Lunar Suface↗
NASA NTRS2011

CloudSat Reflectivity Data Visualization Inside Hurricanes

We have presented methods to rapidly produce visualization and outreach products from CloudSat data for science and the media These methods combine data from several sources in the product generation process In general, the process can be completely automatic, producing products and notifying potential users

remote science↗