The National Aeronautics and Space Administration maintains a variety of aircraft and sensor systems dedicated to the support of remote sensing research. Data are collected for the atmospheric, land, and ocean processes aspects of the NASA Earth Science program, as well as for universities and other government agencies. Several of these systems are being used to validate algorithms for the NASA Earth Observing System. The NASA aircraft, located at Dryden Flight Research Center, are used as test-beds for advanced sensor design and satellite simulation, as well as to support scientific and operational data collection campaigns. Numerous sensor systems are in use and under development by NASA, including multispectral imaging devices, a SAR system, and a suite of large-format mapping cameras.
All instruments are spectrally, spatially, and radiometrically calibrated on a routine basis.
The aircraft themselves are equipped with navigation systems that continuously record GPS location and platform attitude data. There are a variety of other sensors that fly on these aircraft that are owned by individual investigators, which are not within the scope of this document. To download a printable verion of this document in either Word or PDF format Click the appropriate button below. This instrument uses scanning optics and four spectrometers to image a 614 pixel swath simultaneously in 224 contiguous spectral bands. The MAS was a joint project of Daedalus Enterprises, Berkeley Camera Engineering, and Ames Research Center.