NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

VIS is a standard video camera packaged for flight use and mounted in a downward looking orientation. It provides a continuous view of the weather and terrain below the aircraft flight track. The VIS camera has a resolution of 20 meters and will be mounted to verify the aircraft flight track.

This is a Daedalus AADS-1268 scanner that flies on the ER-2 aircraft and simulates the LANDSAT Thematic Mapper instrument, with slightly higher spatial resolution. The TMS is used for collecting data similar in application to data collected by the Thematic Mapper (TM) sensor including Earth resources mapping, vegetation/landcover mapping, and geologic studies.

Sensor/Aircraft Parameters

Spatial Resolution: 25 meters (all bands) from 19.8 km (65,000 ft.)
Total Field of View: 42.5 degrees
Instant. Field of View: 1.25 mrad
Swath Width: 8.4 nmi (15.6 km) at 65,000 feet
Pixel/Scan Line: 716
Scan Rate: 12.5 scans/second
Ground Speed: 400 knots (206 m/sec)

Wild Heerbrugg RC-10 Mapping Cameras with a 9 x 9 inch image format are flown on virtually every ER-2 earth imaging mission. The RC-10s may be employed with six or twelve inch focal length lenses providing image scales of two miles to the inch and one mile to the inch respectively. RC-10 mounting stations include the ER-2 Q-bay, nose pod and the right and left wing pods.

The MODIS Airborne Simulator (MAS) is a multispectral scanner configured to approximate the Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS), an instrument to be orbited on the NASA EOS-AM1 platform. MODIS is designed to measure terrestrial and atmospheric processes. The MAS was a joint project of Daedalus Enterprises, Berkeley Camera Engineering, and Ames Research Center. The MODIS Airborne Simulator records fifty spectral bands.

The MASTER is similar to the MAS, with the thermal bands modified to more closely match the NASA EOS ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) satellite instrument, which was launched in 1998. It is intended primarily to study geologic and other Earth surface properties. Flying on both high and low altitude aircraft, the MASTER has been operational since early 1998.

Instrument Type: Multispectral Imager
Measurements: VNIR/SWIR/MWIR/LWIR Imagery

The HyMap scanner, built by Integrated Spectronics Inc of Sydney, Australia, has four spectrometers in the interval 0.45 to 2.45 micrometers excluding the two major atmospheric water absorption windows. The bandwidths are not constant, but vary between 15 and 18 nanometers. The scanner also has an on-board bright source calibration system, which is used to monitor the stability of the signal. The signal/noise ratio measured outside the aircraft with a sun angle of 30° and a 50% reflectance standard is more than 500/1 except near the major atmospheric water absorption bands. The scanner is mounted on a hydraulically actuated Zeiss-Jena SM 2000 stabilized platform. The platform provides +/- 5 degrees of pitch and roll correction. The yaw can be offset by +/- 20 degrees with +/- 8 degrees of stabilization. The platform provides a residual error in nadir pointing of less than 1 degree and reduces aircraft motion effects by a factor ranging from 10:1 to 30:1.

The basic HyMap specifications are:

IFOV: 2.5 mr along track, 2.0 mr across track (Spatial resolution 3.5–10 m)
FOV: 62 degrees (512 pixels)

The CPI records high-resolution (2.3 micron pixel size) digital images of particles that pass through the sample volume at speeds up to 200 m/s. In older models, CCD camera flashes up to 75 frames per second (fps), potentially imaging more than 25 particles per frame. More recent camera upgrades capable of bringing frame rate to nearly 500 fps. Real time image processing crops particle images from the full frame, eliminating blank space and compressing data by >1000:1. CPI is designed for ummanned use, with AI parameters to optimize performance without supervision.

The Digital Mapping System (DMS) is an airborne digital camera system that acquires high resolution natural color and panchromatic imagery from low and medium altitude research aircraft. The DMS includes an Applanix Position and Orientation system to allow precision image geo-rectification. Data acquired by DMS are used by a variety of scientific programs to monitor variation in environmental conditions, assess global change, and respond to natural disasters.

Mission data are processed and archived by the Airborne Sensor Facility (ASF) located at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA. DMS imagery from Operation IceBridge are archived at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, CO.

Instrument Type: Canon/Zeiss Camera with IMU/GPS
Measurements: 21-Mpixel natural color Imagery