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At least 307 records · Page 17
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2000

The Earth Observing System Terra Mission

Langley's remarkable solar and lunar spectra collected from Mt. Whitney inspired Arrhenius to develop the first quantitative climate model in 1896. After the launch in Dec. 16 1999, NASA's Earth Observing AM Satellite (EOS-Terra) will repeat Langley's experiment, but for the entire planet, thus pioneering a wide array of calibrated spectral observations from space of the Earth System. Conceived in response to real environmental problems, EOS-Terra, in conjunction with other international satellite efforts, will fill a major gap in current efforts by providing quantitative global data sets with a resolution better than 1 km on the physical, chemical and biological elements of the earth system. Thus, like Langley's data, EOS-Terra can revolutionize climate research by inspiring a new generation of climate system models and enable us to assess the human impact on the environment. In the talk I shall review the historical perspective of the Terra mission and the key new elements of the mission. We expect to have first images that demonstrate the most innovative capability from EOS Terra 5 instruments: MODIS - 1.37 micron cirrus cloud channel; 250m daily coverage for clouds and vegetation change; 7 solar channels for land and aerosol studies; new fire channels; Chlorophyll fluorescence; MISR - first 9 multi angle views of clouds and vegetation; MOPITT - first global CO maps and C114 maps; ASTER - Thermal channels for geological studies with 15-90 m resolution.

Kaufman, Yoram J.↗
NASA NTRS1988

NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS): An opportunity for mankind

The Earth Observing System (EOS) is a suite of instruments joined by a common data information system and will carry out multidisciplinary Earth science studies using a variety of remote sensing techniques. The mission is planned for the 1990's and will focus on the Earth as a system requiring measurements in the areas of hydrology, geology, forestry, meteorology, oceanography, and agriculture. Two platforms are envisioned on the U.S. side each carrying a payload of between 3500 and 4000 kgs. The European Space Agency and Japan are integrating plans for their own programs with EOS and will provide a third and fourth platform. The results of the EOS program will be applied to biogeochemistry and climate studies, and to environment management.

Imhoff, M. L.↗
NASA NTRS2010

The Representation of Tropical Cyclones Within the Global William Putman Non-Hydrostatic Goddard Earth Observing System Model (GEOS-5) at Cloud-Permitting Resolutions

The Goddard Earth Observing System Model (GEOS-S), an earth system model developed in the NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO), has integrated the non-hydrostatic finite-volume dynamical core on the cubed-sphere grid. The extension to a non-hydrostatic dynamical framework and the quasi-uniform cubed-sphere geometry permits the efficient exploration of global weather and climate modeling at cloud permitting resolutions of 10- to 4-km on today's high performance computing platforms. We have explored a series of incremental increases in global resolution with GEOS-S from irs standard 72-level 27-km resolution (approx.5.5 million cells covering the globe from the surface to 0.1 hPa) down to 3.5-km (approx. 3.6 billion cells).

Putman, William M.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Comprehensive system models: Strategies for evaluation

The task of evaluating comprehensive earth system models is vast involving validations of every model component at every scale of organization, as well as tests of all the individual linkages. Even the most detailed evaluation of each of the component processes and the individual links among them should not, however, engender confidence in the performance of the whole. The integrated earth system is so rich with complex feedback loops, often involving components of the atmosphere, oceans, biosphere, and cryosphere, that it is certain to exhibit emergent properties very difficult to predict from the perspective of a narrow focus on any individual component of the system. Therefore, a substantial share of the task of evaluating comprehensive earth system models must reside at the level of whole system evaluations. Since complete, integrated atmosphere/ ocean/ biosphere/ hydrology models are not yet operational, questions of evaluation must be addressed at the level of the kinds of earth system processes that the models should be competent to simulate, rather than at the level of specific performance criteria. Here, we have tried to identify examples of earth system processes that are difficult to simulate with existing models and that involve a rich enough suite of feedbacks that they are unlikely to be satisfactorily described by highly simplified or toy models. Our purpose is not to specify a checklist of evaluation criteria but to introduce characteristics of the earth system that may present useful opportunities for model testing and, of course, improvement.

Field, Christopher↗
NASA NTRS1998

Earth Observing System: Science Objectives and Challenges

The Earth Observing System (EOS) is a space-based observing system comprised of a series of satellite sensors by which scientists can monitor the Earth, a Data and Information System (EOSDIS) enabling researchers worldwide to access the satellite data, and an interdisciplinary science research program to interpret the satellite data. In this presentation I will describe the key areas of scientific uncertainty in understanding climate and global change, and follow that with a description of the EOS goals, objectives, and scientific research elements that comprise the program (instrument science teams and interdisciplinary investigations). Finally, I will describe how scientists and policy makers intend to use EOS data to improve our understanding of key global change uncertainties, such as: (i) clouds and radiation, including fossil fuel and natural emissions of sulfate aerosol and its potential impact on cloud feedback, (ii) man's impact on ozone depletion, with examples of ClO and O3 obtained from the UARS satellite during the Austral Spring, and (iii) volcanic eruptions and their impact on climate, with examples from the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo.

King, Michael D.↗
NASA NTRS1999

Earth Observing System: Science Objectives and Challenges

The Earth Observing System (EOS) is a space-based observing system comprised of a series of satellite sensors by which scientists can monitor the Earth, a Data and Information System (EOSDIS) enabling researchers worldwide to access the satellite data, and an interdisciplinary science research program to interpret the satellite data. In this presentation we review the key areas of scientific uncertainty in understanding climate and global change, and follow that with a description of the EOS goals, objectives, and scientific research elements that comprise the program (instrument science teams and interdisciplinary investigations). Finally, I will describe how scientists and policy makers intend to use EOS data improve our understanding of key global change uncertainties, such as: (i) clouds and radiation, including fossil fuel and natural emissions of sulfate aerosol and its potential impact on cloud feedback, (ii) man's impact on ozone depletion, with examples of ClO and O3 obtained from the UARS satellite during the Austral Spring, and (iii) volcanic eruptions and their impact on climate, with examples from the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo.

King, Michael D.↗
NASA NTRS1993

The Payload Advisory Panel and the Data and Information System Advisory Panel of the Investigators Working Group of the Earth Observing System: A joint report

The Payload Advisory Panel of the Investigators Working Group (IWG) for the Earth Observing System (EOS) met 4 to 6 October 1993 in Herndon, Virginia. The Panel, originally composed of the Interdisciplinary Science Principal Investigators, was expanded to include all Principal Investigators and as such is now the IWG itself. The meeting also addressed directly a report from the EOS Data and Information System (EOSDIS) Advisory Panel. The meeting focused on payload issues in the years 2000 to 2005; however, some subjects in the nearer-term, most significantly EOSDIS, were considered. The overarching theme of convergence in Earth observations set a backdrop for the entire meeting. Other themes included: atmospheric chemistry; remote sensing of the global cycles of energy, water, and carbon in EOS; ocean and land-ice altimetry; and the EOSDIS. The Totol Solar Irradiance Monitoring Report and results from the Accelerated Canopy Chemistry Program are included as appendices.

Moore, Berrien, III↗
NASA NTRS2020

The Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation: An Earth Science Imaging Spectroscopy Mission

The Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation, EMIT, is planned to operate from the International Space Station starting no earlier than the fall of 2021. EMIT will use visible to short wavelength infrared imaging spectroscopy to determine the mineral composition of the arid land dust source regions of the Earth to advance our knowledge of the radiative forcing effect of these aerosols. Mineral dust emitted into the atmosphere under high wind conditions is an element of the Earth system with many impacts to the Earth’s energy balance, atmosphere, surface, and oceans. The Earth’s mineral dust cycle with source, transport, and deposition phases are studied with advanced Earth System Models. Because the chemical composition, optical and surface properties of soil particles vary strongly with the mineral composition of the source, these models require knowledge of surface soil mineral dust source composition knowledge to accurately understand dust impacts on the Earth system now and in the future. At present, compositional knowledge of the Earth’s mineral dust source regions from existing data sets is uncertain as a result of limited measurements. EMIT will use spectroscopically derived surface mineral composition to update the prescribe boundary conditions for state-of-the-art Earth System Models. The EMIT-initialized models will be used to investigate the impact of direct radiative forcing in the Earth system that depends strongly on the composition of the mineral dust aerosols emitted into the atmosphere. These new measurements and related products will be used to address the EMIT science objectives and made available to the science community for additional investigations. An overview of the EMIT science, development, and mission is presented in this paper.

Green, Robert O.↗
NASA NTRS1986

The earth observing system

This paper summarizes concepts for an Earth Observing System (EOS) for the 1990s that will provide the observational capabilities and an information system needed to understand how the earth works as a system. The concept diverges somewhat from past practices in that it considers EOS as an information system, where mission operation, EOS data bases and information about other relevant data sets are tied together by an information network. Three EOS instrument packages were chosen on the basis of synergistic groupings of instruments to make simultaneous observations of selected phenomena over a variety of wavelengths.

Hartle, R. E.↗
NASA NTRS2016

The Earth Observing System (EOS) Ground System: Leveraging an Existing Operational Ground System Infrastructure to Support New Missions

The Earth Observer System (EOS) was officially established in 1990 and went operational in December 1999 with the launch of its flagship spacecraft Terra. Aqua followed in 2002 and Aura in 2004. All three spacecraft are still operational and producing valuable scientific data. While all are beyond their original design lifetime, they are expected to remain viable well into the 2020s. The EOS Ground System is a multi-mission system based at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center that supports science and spacecraft operations for these three missions. Over its operational lifetime to date, the EOS Ground System has evolved as needed to accommodate mission requirements. With an eye towards the future, several updates are currently being deployed. Subsystem interconnects are being upgraded to reduce data latency and improve system performance. End-of-life hardware and operating systems are being replaced to mitigate security concerns and eliminate vendor support gaps. Subsystem hardware is being consolidated through the migration to Virtual Machine based platforms. While mission operations autonomy was not a design goal of the original system concept, there is an active effort to apply state-of-the-art products from the Goddard Mission Services Evolution Center (GMSEC) to facilitate automation where possible within the existing heritage architecture. This presentation will provide background information on the EOS ground system architecture and evolution, discuss latest improvements, and conclude with the results of a recent effort that investigated how the current system could accommodate a proposed new earth science mission.

Earth Science Mission Operations (ESMO)↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Aeroheating Testing of the Mars Sample Return Earth Entry System with Surface Roughness

The Mars Sample Return Earth Entry System is a mission concept which would be the first NASA entry vehicle to utilize a woven thermal protection system as well as a 52.5 degree sphere-cone forebody geometry. Due to its novel design, historic experimental data sets were insufficient to validate the models used to characterize the expected aerothermal environment. A wind tunnel test campaign was funded by the Mars Sample Return Earth Entry System project in the NASA Langley 20-Inch Mach 6 Air Tunnel in order to obtain validation data. The December 2023 test entry of this campaign sought to obtain thermographic data to capture the impact of supersonic flow near woven surface roughness elements on convective heating augmentation, which was the largest remaining uncertainty in aerothermal design of the Earth Entry System. Data obtained were in family with prior results obtained on identical woven patterns without supersonic flow present at roughness elements, and it was found that this presence of supersonic flow did not have a noticeable effect on surface convective heating augmentation. Data were directly leveraged to support the NASA Mars Sample Return flight program and this data set is valuable for validating computational solutions on roughness-resolved grids.

Mars Sample Return↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Aeroheating Testing of the Mars Sample Return Earth Entry System with Surface Roughness

The Mars Sample Return Earth Entry System is a mission concept which would be the first NASA entry vehicle to utilize a woven thermal protection system as well as a 52.5 degree sphere-cone forebody geometry. Due to its novel design, historic experimental data sets were insufficient to validate the models used to characterize the expected aerothermal environment. A wind tunnel test campaign was funded by the Mars Sample Return Earth Entry System project in the NASA Langley 20-Inch Mach 6 Air Tunnel in order to obtain validation data. The December 2023 test entry of this campaign sought to obtain thermographic data to capture the impact of supersonic flow near woven surface roughness elements on convective heating augmentation, which was the largest remaining uncertainty in aerothermal design of the Earth Entry System. Data obtained were in family with prior results obtained on identical woven patterns without supersonic flow present at roughness elements, and it was found that this presence of supersonic flow did not have a noticeable effect on surface convective heating augmentation. Data were directly leveraged to support the NASA Mars Sample Return flight program and this data set is valuable for validating computational solutions on roughness-resolved grids.

Mars Sample Return↗
NASA NTRS1994

Evolution of the Earth-Moon system

The tidal evolution of the Earth-Moon system is reexamined. Several models of tidal friction are first compared in an averaged Hamiltonian formulation of the dynamics. With one of these models, full integrations of the tidally evolving Earth-Moon system are carried out in the complete, fully interacting, and chaotically evolving planetary system. Classic results on the history of the lunar orbit are confirmed by our more general model. A detailed history of the obliquity of the Earth which takes into account the evolving lunar orbit is presented.

Touma, Jihad↗
NASA NTRS1984

Earth Observing System, Conclusions and Recommendations

The following Earth Observing Systems (E.O.S.) recommendations were suggested: (1) a program must be initiated to ensure that present time series of Earth science data are maintained and continued. (2) A data system that provides easy, integrated, and complete access to past, present, and future data must be developed as soon as possible. (3) A long term research effort must be sustained to study and understand these time series of Earth observations. (4) The E.O.S. should be established as an information system to carry out those aspects of the above recommendations which go beyond existing and currently planned activities. (5) The scientific direction of the E.O.S. should be established and continued through an international scientific steering committee.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1996

The Evolving Earth Observing System (EOS) mission operations concept: Then and now

The earth observing system (EOS) mission, a component of NASA's mission to planet earth program, is considered with emphasis on its evolution. The restructuration, re-scoping, re-baselining and re-shaping of the EOS mission are reviewed. The spacecraft and the ground system concepts were re-examined and adjusted in response to the need of identifying better and more cost-effective ways of conducting earth observations while fulfilling the objective of providing comprehensive data for climate change studies. The original mission concept is compared with the current configuration, considering the operation profile and the changes in the ground system.

Kelly, Angelita Castro↗
NASA NTRS1998

Incorporating Parallel Computing into the Goddard Earth Observing System Data Assimilation System (GEOS DAS)

Atmospheric data assimilation is a method of combining actual observations with model forecasts to produce a more accurate description of the earth system than the observations or forecast alone can provide. The output of data assimilation, sometimes called the analysis, are regular, gridded datasets of observed and unobserved variables. Analysis plays a key role in numerical weather prediction and is becoming increasingly important for climate research. These applications, and the need for timely validation of scientific enhancements to the data assimilation system pose computational demands that are best met by distributed parallel software. The mission of the NASA Data Assimilation Office (DAO) is to provide datasets for climate research and to support NASA satellite and aircraft missions. The system used to create these datasets is the Goddard Earth Observing System Data Assimilation System (GEOS DAS). The core components of the the GEOS DAS are: the GEOS General Circulation Model (GCM), the Physical-space Statistical Analysis System (PSAS), the Observer, the on-line Quality Control (QC) system, the Coupler (which feeds analysis increments back to the GCM), and an I/O package for processing the large amounts of data the system produces (which will be described in another presentation in this session). The discussion will center on the following issues: the computational complexity for the whole GEOS DAS, assessment of the performance of the individual elements of GEOS DAS, and parallelization strategy for some of the components of the system.

Larson, Jay W.↗
NASA NTRS1983

Earth observation system: Spacecraft design

The Earth Observation Satellite (EOS) was a study funded by NASA Langley Research Center. The study was a system investigation of the total spacecraft integration with its major subsystems and sensors. Mission optimization and ranking using various sensors was also an objective of the contract. Integrating the spacecraft and major subsystems with the large microwave radiometer was done, essentially making the radiometer a free-flyer without an external spacecraft. Another program objective was to provide design and analysis data on microwave radiometer satellites augmented with additional Earth, ocean, and atmospheric sensors. A top-down systems approach resulted in a detailed design integrating subsystems and sensors into the microwave support structure. An important objective of the program was to identify technology needs for Earth observation satellites. The definition and understanding of these design drivers are critical in order to set priorities for future EOS work.

Herbert, J. J.↗
NASA NTRS1990

AEOSS design guide for system analysis on Advanced Earth-Orbital Spacecraft Systems

Advanced Earth Orbital Spacecraft System (AEOSS) enables users to project the requried power, weight, and cost for a generic earth-orbital spacecraft system. These variables are calculated on the component and subsystem levels, and then the system level. The included six subsystems are electric power, thermal control, structure, auxillary propulsion, attitude control, and communication, command, and data handling. The costs are computed using statistically determined models that were derived from the flown spacecraft in the past and were categorized into classes according to their functions and structural complexity. Selected design and performance analyses for essential components and subsystems are also provided. AEOSS has the feature permitting a user to enter known values of these parameters, totally and partially, at all levels. All information is of vital importance to project managers of subsystems or a spacecraft system. AEOSS is a specially tailored software coded from the relational database program of the Acius; 4th Dimension with a Macintosh version. Because of the licensing agreement, two versions of the AEOSS documents were prepared. This version AEOSS Design Guide, is for users to exploit the full capacity of the 4th Dimension. It is for a user who wants to alter or expand the program structures, the program statements, and the program procedures. The user has to possess a 4th Dimension first.

Lee, Hwa-Ping↗