As this Overview continues, we presume that you may want to get a general picture of satellite activity between 1995 (near the end of the time in the satellite bar graph shown on the previous page) and 2006, which highlights the present and future plans for remote sensing systems. This graph gives a summary of many of the satellites, both governmental and commercial, scheduled for that time period (more details in Section 21) Some of the systems developed by the European Space Agency, Japan, India, Russia, Ukraine, China, and China-Brazil are described on page 23 of the Introduction. A good brief summary of the space programs of various nations is given at this Wikipedia Internet site; also, see Appendix A of this Remote Sensing Tutorial.
This list is impressive. The best known of the active earth-observing commercial, or quasi-commercial, satellites are SPOT, IRS, Quickbird, IKONOS, and OrbView. Another way to obtain two vital particulars about some of these satellites is to examine a plot that shows maximum resolution and orbital swath widths: Additional relevant graphs are found on page 21-1 A Website that lists nearly all satellites currently tasked for earth observations is Remote Sensing Platforms and Sensors, maintained in the United Kingdom. Additional details on some of these satellites is given on the Website maintained by Ames Research Center (ARC). ALOS (Advanced Land Observing Satellite), built by the Japanese, was launched on January 23, 2006. You can check out its complement of sensors and status at their NASDA ALOS Home Page. Even as privately-funded satellites are now orbiting the Earth (see below), many remote sensing operations are still very much government-driven (U.S. and International) when it comes to gathering information for the public good. Thus scientists, especially the academicians, and personnel in national agencies are charged with monitoring the Earth's natural status, managing its land use and other resources, and looking beyond to the heavens. These people are constantly relying on a variety of satellites to conduct research, glean information pertaining to interpreting and predicting the environment, and devising new applications. Thus has developed a massive U.S. and multi-national program to study what is called the "Earth System", in a vast project known as the Earth Science Enterprise (see all of Section 16).
The "kick-off" to this endeavor, which will bring together thousands of investigators from many countries through at least the first decade of the 21st century, was the launch of Terra in late 1999. This spacecraft mounts 5 sophisticated sensor packages - ASTER, CERES, MISR, MODIS, and MOPITT - all looking simultaneously at the Earth's land, oceans, botanical/organic landcover , and climate to gain an integrated picture (the Earth System) of its environmental functions. The marvelous data sets, expressed as images, are on pages 16-9 and 16-10, if you want a preview of Terra's continuing accomplishments. The companion satellite, Aqua, launched in 2002, is described on page 16-10a. For the moment, we will entice you with just one image, a MODIS view of the Middle East and Egypt where, as this is written, so much turmoil is threatening hopes for a meaningful peace between the Arab nations and Israel. The meteorological satellites operated by NOAA also produce wide field imagery. The latest in the polar-orbiting series, NOAA-17, launched on June 24, 2002 produced, as its first image, this scene that covers some of the same regions shown in the MODIS image. The
European Space Agency (ESA) has launched two multisensor spacecraft, ERS-1 (1991) and ERS-2 (1995). The ATSR (Along Track Scanning Radiometer) produced this image of the western part of Africa (Senegal) in which the outline of a circular structure is seen in the tropical forest (green)
The ERS-2 radar produced this colorized image of part of Slovenia: In late 2001 the European Space Agency launched (from near the equator in India) its first environmental "micro-satellite", Proba, which weighed just 100 kg. Operating from a 600 km orbit, its principal instrument, CHRIS (Compact High Resolution Imaging Spectrometer) produces color images covering 18.5 km on a side at 18 m resolution. With 200 narrow bandwidth bands, this experimental satellite hosts one of the first of the new generation of hyperspectral (narrow band) sensors. Proba also has an imager, HRC, that yields black and white images at 8 m resolution. Here is one of the first CHRIS images, of Brugge, Belgium, in winter: More familiar to American viewers is this Proba natural color image of San Francisco: ESA followed up with the launch of its Envisat on February 28, 2002. With a swath width intermediate between OrbView and Proba, namely 690 miles (1100 km), this satellite is designed to conduct primarily marine and atmospheric studies, as well as monitoring vegetation. Although its resolution - 300 m - is much less than, say, the IKONOS system, it has 15 individual spectral bands between 390 and 1040 nanometers, whose band widths allow almost continuous coverage of wavelength intervals in the Visible-Near IR segment of the spectrum. Its two principal sensors are MERIS (Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer) and ASAR, a radar unit. More about this satellite can be found at ESA's Envisat Internet site. Below is part of a MERIS image showing the entire island of Sicily in approximate natural color.
Beneath that is a full MERIS image (smaller scale; much wider area of coverage) of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal), southern France, and Morocco in Africa. Envisat also carries 9 other instruments including the above-mentioned Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR). Other ASAR images are shown on Page 14-14. Below is an ASAR view of the Russian city of Dzerskinsk on the Volga River.
The commercialization of space imagery is
currently the "hottest item" going in the remote sensing field, or perhaps we can now say "business". One of the first companies, in business even as ERTS-1 was launched, is the Earth Satellite Corp. (now renamed MDA Federal, Inc.). Check out their updated website to get an idea of what they do and offer. Many other remote sensing firms have since appeared.
The chief "selling point" for some systems is the high resolution their satellites provide. The chart below lists by country nearly all the active and planned land/sea observing satellites through 2002 that are either privately owned or operated by governments as a source of cost-offsetting income:
The breakthrough in bringing the resolution of satellite imagery into the range of aerial photography occurred in the late 1980s. When the Russians began to sell high resolution imagery on the open international market, this led to a reassessment by the U.S. and other countries of their policy to hold NASA and other countries and organizations that make their remote sensing data public to limits around 15-20 meters. The SPIN-2 satellite, with its KR-1000 camera capable of 2 m images, began flooding the market in the early 1990s with views such as this scene around the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.:
Now, commercial firms can release 1 meter resolution imagery, giving detail approaching "spy satellite" status. Just how powerful this improvement in resolution can be is visualized in this next illustration which shows the progressive increase in information going from 30 m (Landsat-4 TM) to 1 m (OrbView-1pan) using the same scene (U.S. Capitol building) for comparison:
The advent of such high resolution civilian remote sensors has moved remote sensing close to the capabilities once reserved exclusively for military surveillance systems (see Page Intro 26e). Over the years, military and intelligence monitoring of sensitive targets from air and space has consumed much more resources (i.e., currencies) than civilian programs. Spy satellites, either deactivated now or in current operation, have had a significant, but seemingly indirect, impact to civilian earth- and space-observing systems. Their principal contribution, or driving force, has been development of technologies (directed towards high resolution) that, in recent years, have been declassified to an extent that civilian systems can now incorporate some of the improvement capabilities (these developments had been undertaken independently by NASA and other space agencies but until recently governments prohibited their use in operational systems).
The first major company to enter the marketplace with quality imagery is SPOT-Image (Systeme Probatoire d'Observation de la Terre), which is associated with CNES (Centre National dEtudes Spatiale). (Click here or here to examine two versions of SPOT's Internet home site.) This series of satellites has been launched on Ariane rockets from a base in French Guiana (northern South America). The headquarters and control center is in Toulouse, France. Formed in 1982, the organization has launched SPOT systems in 1986 (SPOT-1), 1990 (2), 1993 (3), 1998 (4), and, on May 3, 2002, SPOT-5. More on this program, including background on the sensors, on how SPOT produces stereo image pairs, and on applications, is found page 3-2. For now, we will show three images made by SPOT. The first shows the Rhone Valley in southern France where it enters the Mediterranean Sea, rendered in the SPOT multispectral mode (false color) at 20 meter resolution; the area covered is 50 x 50 kilometers.
Next is a 10 meter panchromatic image from SPOT-4 covering a part of Las Vegas, Nevada, one of the fastest growing cities in America. This image is the first made by SPOT-5 (launched on May 3, 2002), showing the port of Eleusis in Greece, imaged at 2.5 m by the new HRG (High Resolution Geometric camera), which puts SPOT-Image in direct competition with other, newer companies that operate high resolution systems. Another SPOT-5 image, in color and at 5 meter resolution, displays part of the Old Town of Stockholm, Sweden: The panchromatic cameras on the SPOTs can be pointed off nadir to provide image pairs that are very effective in stereo viewing, as described on page 11-9.
SPOT is one of many higher resolution satellites that can, if clouds are few, provide useful imagery of the effects of disasters. The SPOT-2 image below was taken in October of 1986, less than five months after the nuclear power plant explosion at Chernobyl in the Ukraine. Visible is the extensive damage around Reactor 4: One of the pioneers in commercial satellites is the Space Imaging Company (Denver, with offices in Europe and Asia) (Web site: Space Imaging). (Note: As of January 2006, Space Imaging has become part of Orbital Imaging, Inc. [see below], with the combined companies [now the largest commercial satellite corporation in the world] being known as GeoEYE). The first in Space Imaging's IKONOS series failed during launch in April of 1999. The second IKONOS satellite was launched in September 1999 and has been operating successfully. Here is a panchromatic image of a part of downtown Washington, D.C., which can be further processed to attain 1 meter resolution. This image shows the Mall, the Ellipse, the White House, the Washington Monument, and many government and private buildings. But at the scale shown, individual automobiles are not resolved.
However, enlargement of a small part just southeast of the above IKONOS image shows the now realized potential of satellite imagery to disclose features, such as cars, approaching the full resolution of 1 meter. The circular building is the Hirshhorn Museum; the National Air and Space Museum and across the street, the building that once housed NASA, also appear.
Just outside the famed Washington "Beltway", in Greenbelt, MD, is the complex of buildings set in the forests of the Dept. of Agriculture's BARC (a 10000 acre experimental station) which is the home of the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) - which includes Code 935, the Information Sciences Branch, the original sponsor of this Tutorial. It is also the NASA Center where the writer (NMS) worked for 21 years. Here is GSFC as seen first in an aerial oblique photo and then at 4 meter resolution by the IKONOS high resolution camera. The two buildings in the lower right in the space image are the home of the Earth Observations program and the Terra-EOS spacecraft personnel. Goddard is a lead center in Earth Observations, Meteorology, and Astronomy.
Goddard's chief "competitor" in remote sensing, in particular radar and infrared, is the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California (shown below). JPL is also heavily involved in Solar System exploration and, to a lesser extent, certain aspects of Astronomy. Many improvements and innovations in image processing and other aspects of remote sensing were developed at JPL, primarily to support their Planetology program but also Earth applications. Shown here is a Google Earth (described below) view of JPL and an aerial oblique photos;
The ultimate in civilian remote sensing, for the present, is to achieve a resolution capable of seeing individual people from high orbital altitudes. IKONOS has achieved that - in this view of the famed Tiananmen Square in central Beijing, the scattered dots are actually native and foreign tourists moving about this heart of the capital city of China.
Space Imaging, Inc. has been a distributor for IRS (Indian Remote Sensing) Satellite imagery. With both panchromatic and multispectral sensors, IRS can produce color images with 4 meter resolution. This example of Kobe, Japan (some months after an earthquake there) shows the detail available with that system (disregard the yellow squares; these insets will not enlarge):
Another such recent high resolution commercial satellite is QuickBird 2, built by Ball Bros. and operated by Digital Globe (formerly known as EarthWatch), launched on October 18, 2001 into an orbit at 280 km. Its color imagery (an example from the Antarctic is shown on page 7-3) can achieve a resolution of 2.4 m (9 ft). Its black and white imagery attains a resolution of 0.65 m (2 ft). To set the stage for several Quickbird examples from southeast Asia, we will first look three lower resolution scenes, the first at a wide angle scene made by the MODIS sensor on Terra which covers most of Vietnam, Cambodia (note Mekong River), Thailand, and part of Malaysia. The greens denote the thick jungles that were such a difficult terrain in which to fight during the Vietnam War but observe that much of Thailand has been deforested (browns):
From this regional view, we will zero in on one of the great cities of Asia, Bangkok, in central Thailand. As a start let's look at an older photo taken from space by an astronaut. On the whole, it is not sharp or well color-balanced and rather dark. Until the last decade, astronaut photography was hit and miss, with many like the one below. Some pictures were excellent; most were tantallizing but unsatisfactory. Part of the problem was the inability to remove haze or atmospheric moisture. (See Section 12 on Astronaut Photography for more details.)
From this next image, made by Terra's ASTER, you will like concur that this type of image is superior to the above astronaut photo in capturing information about Bangkok.
To further appreciate the value of high resolution space imagery, this next image (2 meter resolution) comes from the KVR-1000 photographic camera operating from the Russian SPIN-2 satellite (the photos taken are developed onboard, scanned digitally, and then sent as signals to a ground facility in southern Russia) The image covers part of central Bangkok:
The next pair of images, made by QuickBird, show a high resolution (4 meters) on top and then a very high resolution (1 meter) view of the city that contains the famed Royal Palace in Bangkok. Try to fit the bottom image into the top one:
As a related aside, the writer (NMS) had the privilege of being given a tour of this fabulous palace by a member of the Royal Family when I was part of a two-man mission to Bangkok in 1975 to participate in a Symposium sponsored by the Thai government that featured the uses of the ERTS-1 (Landsat-1) satellite. Here is just one of the numerous photos I took of this Palace:
Just as we have seen with the IKONOS high resolution color imagery, Quickbird too produces stunning scenes. Compare the Quickbird scene of downtown San Francisco shown here with an almost identical coverage provided by IKONOS near the bottom of Page 6-9
And, consider this superb Quickbird-2 image of the Great Pyramid of Giza, southwest of Cairo. This imposing structure dates around 2600 B.C.
Quickbird-2 has, with its panchromatic scanner, obtained imagery with the highest resolution yet achieved (and allowed by national security interests): namely, 0.67 meters (about 2 feet). Digital Globe has released this example - a scene dominated by the giant Ferris wheel (115 meters high) in a Tokyo, Japan amusement park:
Quickbird has played a key role in "bringing satellite imagery to the general public"; this also serves to promote the benefits of remote sensing. Digital Globe has an arrangement with the search engine Google to provide images of almost anywhere on Earth to the television news rooms through its Google Earth service. When any such image appears on TV, look for the Digital Globe/Google Earth label on that scene. Now anyone can access these images. Users of Google can download a Google Earth program for free - or a more complete service by subscription. (One must have a Microsoft 2000 or newer operating system; 256 or more kbytes of RAM are also helpful.) One can recognize a Google
Earth image by the distinctive information shown on the left and bottom sides, as in this example:
A panoply of imagery is available through Google Earth, ranging in scale from continents to individual buildings. These three images extend in scale from Europe down to Rome and to the Coliseum in that city (see also other Rome images on page 6-12).
During the July-August 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, Google Earth images were almost nightly occurrences on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox news broadcast. As examples of what might be seen during this war, look at the next three images - the last a pair that show a "before" and "after" rendition of bombing damage to a Beirut neighborhood:
A third American company, Orbital Imaging Corp., Dulles, VA (OrbImage) has now launched OrbView-1, OrbView-2, and OrbView-3. This last satellite was placed in orbit by having its rocket booster dropped from an airplane and then ignited (this mode, launch from a ground rocket, and launch from the Space Shuttle are the principal methods used to insert satellites in Earth-circling orbits). This diagram shows the steps in this procedure:
Here is an example of an OrbView-2 image (2800 km wide), in near true color, that embraces a wide area of Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, and western Iran; Israel is in the top left center and Iraq is in the top right center.
In January 2006, a major change occurred in the commercial satellite business. OrbImage purchased Space Imaging to form the largest company in the satellite remote sensing market. Their products are now sold under the name GeoEye. The website is currently sparse but permits entry into the old SpaceImaging and OrbImage sites. Israel launched (from facilities in Russia) in December 5, 2000 its first commercial satellite dedicated to high resolution Earth observations. ImageSat International (ISI), established in 1997 and working with Israel Aircraft Industries and other companies, is now selling 1.8 meter (Standard) and 1.0 meter resolution panchromatic imagery from its EROS A1; this view of Izmir, Turkey is an example: A feature of the EROS A1 imagery is that stereo pairs are acquired. ImageSat had planned a follow-up EROS A2 but "scrubbed" this mission when the market for just panchromatic imagery proved a bit weak. They have now moved into the EROS B series which will have a 0.8 meter panchromatic sensor and a related system that will be multispectral.
EROS B was successfully launched from Siberia on April 25, 2006. Here is one of the first images returned from that spacecraft: Radar images made from orbiting spacecraft are also available for purchase. One of the earliest systems is Radarsat, launched in November 1994 and operated by the Canadian Space Agency. The commercial unit is RadarsatInternational (RSI). Radarsat utilizes the C-Band by itself to make its imagery. Below is an example of a Radarsat image; others are found on page 8-7. The scene shows the Dead Sea south of the Jordan River. All these types of superior resolution satellites have both civilian and military applications. To illustrate what military surveillance can do, we look at two images now. The first involves aircraft reconnaissance over Cuba during the 1962 missile crisis:
Now, commercial systems can release 1 meter resolution imagery, giving details approaching "spy satellite" status. But for now, as an example of what civilian systems can do in reporting on a military system, we show here the image of the U.S. Navy EP-3 Reconnaissance aircraft on Hainan Island off the China coast where it was forced to make an emergency landing in late April, 2001 after a partial collision with a Chinese Jet fighter. The image was produced by Space Imaging Corp. using IKONOS 2 (altitude 680 km [about 420 miles]).
The third example shows an image of an Iraqi military facility during the 1991 Gulf War, using an optical scanning sensor on a U.S. Keynole (KH-11) satellite: Another military use is monitoring before and after effects of bombing during a war. The Second Iraq war (2003), waged by the U.S. and successful in toppling Saddam Husein, was well covered by satellite monitoring. This war was a direct consequence of a new approach to fighting terrorism that evolved after the attacks on September 11, 2001 (9/11) by Al Qaeda against targets in New York and Washington (see below). Here is a MODIS image of Baghdad and surrounding region in early April of 2003, showing the oil fires set as Coalition troops stormed into the city:
One of the SPOT-5 scenes has become very timely, indeed, as it shows the capital, Baghdad before it was attacked from the air. Below is a false color image of this city, cut into two halves by the Tigris River. A general map of Baghdad is reproduced beneath it: Although it will undoubtedly slow down some of the viewers of this Tutorial who have minimal loading rates, we decided to show much of Baghdad in the high resolution (2 meters) image produced by Quickbird-2 (see below) as an example of the details available to both the military and the public during the war with Iraq in Spring of 2003. Scroll to see the full extent; use the above map to local key features: As U.S., Britain, and other Coalition forces began to wage war with Iraq on March 19, 2003, both military and civilian (commercial) satellites having high resolution were daily observing much of that country with emphasis on places where weapons of mass destruction may be located. One group of prime targets are the many palaces of Saddam Hussein.
The palace used for ceremonial and diplomatic activities is the (Old) Republican Palace on the Tigris. Here is an IKONOS satellite (see below) high resolution view of this complex: Palaces, along with government and military buildings and facilities, have been prime targets during the cruise missile and aircraft bomb attacks from the outset of the war. Below is a IKONOS-2 natural color image (resolution = 0.9 meter) of central Baghdad acquired on April 1, 2003 that shows smoke plumes from bombardment during the previous night. Referring to the very large Quickbird image above, see if you can determine the target buildings involved. Of course, this war spread out over most of Iraq, so a full country view is in order. Below is part of an OrbView-2 image (see next paragraph and below) that shows this nation in its totality. Baghdad is located where a blackpatch represents the many fires burning on March 28, 2003. Satellite imagery can sometimes be used to make a political statement. This is evident in this DMSP (Defense Meteorological Satellite Program) nighttime image of parts of China, Japan, and Korea. The white tones correspond to well-lit cities. The southern half of Korea, namely South Korea, is largely well-illuminated, a sign of a high level of prosperity. By contrast, North Korea is almost dark. Yet this is the "rogue" nation, which keeps its citizens in the dark, and has continuously threatened its neighbors and much of the world with its limited but dangerous nuclear capability. This is a classic example of an economically weak nation using its military power to achieve political gains. Now, we consider two other examples of use of high resolution imagery that have both political and humanitarian overtones: Each illustrates the powerful use of these higher resolution satellites is in rapid monitoring of an area subjected to a human-caused or natural disaster.
The worst manmade catastrophe in American history took place on September 11, 2001 (now known simply as "9/11") when Al-Qaeda terrorists attacked New York City, the Pentagon outside Washington, and an aborted attack on the U.S. Capitol that ended in Pennsylvania. Here is a pre-attack photo of Lower Manhattan with the tall twin World Trade Center (WTC) buildings that became the prime target of the attack.
The role played by satellite surveillance was dramatically demonstrated by the imaging within two days of Lower Manhattan in New York City when the twin towers of the World Trade Center were destroyed by those terrorists using highjacked U.S. commercial airliners as "rockets" loaded with explosive jet fuel. The photos below has come to symbolize the worst moments before the WTC twin towers failed and collapsed to the ground:
The first space image of this catastrophe below was taken by the French SPOT-3 satellite just 3 hours after the first impact. IKONOS-2 took the image below of Lower Manhattan nearly two years after 9/11, in which the changes around the "ground zero" area of the World Trade Center are evident. Even higher resolution IKONOS-2 images are presented on page 4-2, that includes a subsection which complements the treatment here of the 9/11 event in New York. The WTC devastation has not just been imaged from satellites. Prior to Landsat and the now numerous earth-observing satellite that followed, users interested in vertical to oblique views of the surface relied chiefly on aerial photos (see Section 10). Here is a photo of Ground Zero for the 9/11 WTC attack taken from an airplane equipped with a mapping camera that flew overhead at an altitude of about 1000 meters (3000 ft). Horrific as the 9/11 attacks against America have proved to be, they pale in comparison to the worst natural disaster to beset mankind in the last 100+ years. In the morning of December 26, 2004 a submarine earthquake of magnitude 9.3 took place off the northwest coast of Sumatra in Indonesia. Movement of the ocean floor was upwards which, in turn, heaved the column of overlying water into a huge mound at the surface. This generated outgoing waves, called tsunamis, that raced as speed up to 800 km/hr (500 mph) over the western Pacific and Indian oceans. When such waves reach shallow waters nearshore they transform into walls of onrushing waters up to 30-40 meters high and crash into beaches and inland for 100s of meters. This madly swirling water destroys buildings and drowns or sweeps living creatures caught in the maelstrom. This devastating tsunami sequence affected Sumatra, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, and as far away as Somalia in Africa. The death toll may have exceeded 300000 people (many missing will never be found) - the worst such disaster in modern times. By sheer chance, the Quickbird satellite (see below), captured a view of a coastal town in Thailand that had been inundated by the initial tsunami and is about to be struck again by a later, smaller tsunami disturbance: More on this disaster, as seen from space, is included on page page 3-7. These diverse images shown above are symbolic of the new benefits coming from the "great leap forward" in remote sensing, that is, the emergence in the 21st Century of private, commercial satellite operations rather than continued dependence on NASA/NOAA, space agencies in other countries, and the military to provide useful imagery of the planet we live and work on.
Another trend in satellites has been to put the same or complementary sensors on a group of satellites that work together to accomplish their mission. In some instances, this configuration is called "formation flying", in that several satellites are located or spaced in orbit such as to look at the Earth under different conditions (e.g., time of day) or with a higher frequency of coverage. In March, 2003, the first of a planned 4 ALSat satellites was launched successfully; the other three will follow later in the year. When all are operating, they will allow any spot on Earth to be covered at least once in a 24-hour period (assuming suitable cloud[low] cover conditions). With wide area coverage at moderate resolutions (34 m under one mode), this will allow them to function as disaster monitoring systems. A fuller description of their capability is given on page I-23. Here is an ALSat-1 image of a 600 km wide scene extending from the Great Valley of California across southern Nevada into Utah: When the word "NASA" is presented to the "citizen in the street", the first image that usually comes to mind today is that of the Space Transport System (STS), more commonly known as the Space Shuttle. Shown here is a mission is being launched. The Shuttle, at the heart of America's space program in the last 25 years, has been involved in many scientific and technological projects, some of which are directly involved in remote sensing applications. For the past ten years or so the centerpiece of the NASA program, along with participation by other nations, has been the International Space Station (ISS). It may seem as though (in the year 2007) this massive effort to put another permanent facility (the Russian MIR was first) is given little attention in this Tutorial. This is not quite the case: astronaut photography is conducted from ISS and over time various remote sensors were or will be installed and tested aboard this space "home". For now, we will only allude to this potential by showing two pictures of ISS taken by astronauts on Space Shuttle Mission 110 in late 2002 and the second on September of 2006 after a new solar array was attached. As more remote sensing output is produced during future missions, examples will be added to this Remote Sensing Tutorial (RST). Currently the ISS is operating at a reduced occupancy level owing to the difficulties in bringing new components to its continuing construction using the Space Shuttle. Starting in mid-2006, 14 missions to the ISS are planned to largely complete the Station by 2010. A pictorial presentation of the schedule (which usually changes or slips) for each launch, the crew assignments, and the main tasks is shown in this diagram (it is too large to be included on this page, so its retrieval is your option) by clicking on here (click on its Back button at top to return to this page).
Here is the ISS in a sketch diagram showing its status at the end of 2007 if the Shuttle missions remain on schedule:
Astronauts are essential to constructing (as well as manning) the ISS. Here we see Robert Curbeam, Jr and Christer Fugelsang on an extra-vehicular activity (EVA) during STS-116 as they made adjustments to part of the Space Station. This performance is an excellent example of why humans play a key role - often unmatched by robots - in conducting critical space operations. The Shuttle was grounded for about two years as a result of the Columbia disaster. Then Discovery was orbited in 2005 and returned to Earth successfully, but notable losses of foam tile (mainly, during launch) caused it to be regrounded for about a year. The second post-Columbia flight (STS-121) began successfully on July 4, 2006, as seen here:
Since the Shuttle now appears to have returned routinely to space, a prime safety procedure will be to monitor it in flight from above for evidence of damage or other trouble. Various imaging satellites, mainly military, can image it when it is in their view. Several images of Columbia were obtained just days before the accident by satellites, once again illustrating the great versatility and value of remote sensing observations from space. Here is one of the images released during the investigation phase: Many more satellites and space probes for both Earth and Astronomical applications are on the drawing boards for future launches. Some of these systems were described above; others in Section 21. For those who want the "latest" in space achievements and updates on launch schedules, we recommend the SpaceFlight Now Web site, which is updated daily (this one is worth adding to your Favorites list). For a longer term preview, check this JPL Missions website. However, since the Columbia disaster and, frankly, for years before, NASA has been experiencing a form of malaise comimg from a lack of supported space initiatives and goals that would carry it solidly into the future. President Kennedy's famed 1961 "Men to the Moon" speech galvanized the Space Agency, and reached out to all mankind, into a decade plus of extraordinary activity and accomplishments. But after Apollo some experts felt that NASA seemed to some to have "lost its way" in searching for adventures that would keep it active and healthy and would retain the respect of the rest of the world for U.S. space leadership. To offset that, on January 14, 2004, President George W. Bush stepped forth with his Administration's "Grand Vision" for NASA's future as a set new goals and a master plan that, if accepted by the public and funded by Congress, will breath 'new life' into space exploration that will ultimately reach for the stars even as it promotes more attention to problems and applications directly pointed to the Earth itself. In his speech, delivered at NASA Headquarters, he charged the Agency with these tasks: 1) use a restored Space Shuttle program to complete the International Space Station by 2010; 2) retire the Shuttle by 2010 and replace it with the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), using modified designs from the Apollo launch systems, with a first manned flight in 2014; 3) by 2015 and beyond establish a manned base on the Moon; 4) use this lunar base as a jumping-off point (lower energy requriements for propulsion) to send humans to Mars (no date set but after 2020); and 5) look beyond towards the challenges of journeying to the outer planets and exploring for life elsewhere in the Universe. These are depicted in the graph below (keeping in mind this is a generalized "road map" that will certainly change significantly as the programs ensue).
During the second decade of the 21st Century, emphasis will be placed on gaining experience about the long term effect of living and working in space by extended occupation of the ISS. Between 2010 and the advent of the CEV, travel to and from the ISS will depend on Russian "ferry" space vehicles. The CEV itself is now under development by a consortium of companies headed by Lockheed Martin. The spacecraft will look something like this artist's conception: Now named Orion, this vehicle will be launched on a new rocket, called ARES, now on the drawing boards. Being almost 6 meters (18 ft) in diameter, the CEV can hold 6 crewmembers when it visits the ISS, and 4 members when it goes to the Moon. A hallmark of NASA's current vision is that it begins with cautious, conservative steps designed to develop basic equiment and gather relevant experience before making any heavy commitments to actually sending astronauts (likely, from many nations, especially those that join in the program through sharing funding) into the beyond. Robotic exploration dominates the first phases. Nevertheless, skeptics have already challenged this (grandiose?) man-in-space effort (largely from its costs, despite those being spread out over decades, and from the viewpoint that unmanned probes can do many of these tasks at much lower costs). We are reminded to gauge the space program in a proper perspective - the costs hover around 1% of the national budget, a small price for the greatest exploration efforts by the human race. Time will tell which of the President's challenges are embarked upon and lead to success. But, one prime goal of this Tutorial is to convince you, its reader, of the exceptional achievements of NASA's and the world's space programs, their value to peoples' lives, and the motivation for continued - even expanded - exploration, Januslike looking inwards at Earth and outwards to the farthest reaches of the Universe through mastery of operating in Space. President Bush's speech has appeared as a video movie at several sites. You may still find it at the NASA Home Page. Although critics have sniped at the scope and details - and questioned where the funding will come from - the likelihood of some kind of program with elements of Bush's proposal is high. The first hurdle is to return men and women to far-out space - the Moon, then Mars.
Historians may eventually rate September 28, 2004 as a prime "red letter day" in the saga of Man's ventures into space. On this day in mid-morning high above the Mojave Desert of California, the first civilian space vehicle and civilian pilot crossed the threshold into outer space (arbitrarily set at 100 km, or 62.5 miles above Earth's surface, well beyond the limits of atmosphere). SpaceShipOne was funded by Paul Allen, a co-founder of Microscoft, and was designed by Burt Rutan (of Voyager fame - a trip around the world on one tank of gas). It was built by Scaled Composites and guided by veteran pilot, Michael Melvill, 62, (who also piloted the June 21 suborbital flight that intentionally did not reach the critical altitude), both for three decades associated with efforts to develop privately-funded space vehicles. The incentive was primarily to simply accomplish this great feat and advance the steps towards civilians - and tourists - moving into space routinely. Another driver was to win the Ansari X-Prise, $10 million to the first group that launches pilot and passengers into outer space twice in two weeks.
The June 2004 mission is just short of that step, being the first to allow one person to move pass the boundary to outer space. The method, shown in a diagram below, carries the manned rocket on the back of a specially built plane, the White Knight, up to about 43000 ft, at which altitude the space rocket is pushed free, fires its rocket, and moves straight up to about 335000 feet, just above the 100 km height. The flight was not trouble-free, glitches in stabilization resulting from an instrument failure, causing roll, occurred at high altitude but the pilot was able to move to switch to a backup system and regain control. Shown below are five images documenting this great feat: 1) the White Knight, with SpaceShipOne on top, 2) the flight profile, 3) SpaceShipOne in launch mode, 4) the space rocket about to land around 8:15 PDT, and 5) the new astronaut, Mike Melvill: To win the Ansari XPrize ($10 million dollars), SpaceShipOne had to break the space frontier barrier within two weeks of this first flight. Just 5 days later, on Monday, October 4, 2004 - now an historic day in the conquest of space - the rocket plane successfully reached a height of 63.8 miles (337,600 ft). The pilot was Brian Binnie. For safety reasons, in neither Melvill's nor Binnie's flights were there two passengers but their equivalent weights in sand bags, etc. were acceoted as stand-ins. Thus, the X Prize has now been claimed and was awarded in November, in St. Louis (chosen as a tribute to Chas. Lindbergh's famed single engine plane - the Spirit of St. Louis). Both men have been formally honored by being named the first truly civilian "astronauts". More tests will follow to iron out the problems still in need of fine-tuning. But, the significance of this achievement cannot be underestimated! For a cost of just under $30 million, versus the hundreds of $millions it costs to send up a Shuttle mission, individual men, not governments, have started the inevitable process of guiding themselves into the vastness of space. Years will pass before enough power and proper design will lead to routine orbital flights, but the key first step has now occurred. If enough commercial value is found in doing this by the world's citizenry, the long term makeup of the human space program may forever be changed. Accidents will likely happen - the Columbia disaster by all odds will be repeated in some ways - but the spirit of adventure into the Universe will motivate generations to come into the heavens. But we must not forget what NASA and other space agencies have contributed to this noble endeavor - the maxim "We stand on the shoulders of Giants." still rings true. As we approach the close to this Overview, we will now offer you a chance to test your innate knowledge and reasoning skills about some general ideas involved in scene interpretation using remote sensing products. Following a suggestion by a colleague, the writer have devised an optional "Get Acquainted" Quiz using a variety of remote sensing products that relate to just one part of the United States. We invite (urge) you to click here to access the Quiz page that displays the images and tests your experience and common sense through 10 leading questions. When done, either return to the Overview using the Back button or click as advised to the Introduction. So, now on to the Tutorial itself. Start by clicking on the Next Button or returning to the Table of Contents on the Title Page, which you can access by clicking on either the Foreword or What's New buttons below, or through the proper sequence of steps hitting your browser's back button.
However, since you are here, we invite you to scroll through the Acknowledgments below, which spread the credit for this Tutorial to various individuals and organizations.
This Tutorial is the outgrowth of a suggestion by NICHOLAS M. SHORT, JR., who at the time was a computer scientist at Goddard's Code 935
(the first sponsor). He conceived the idea in part as an alternative source of information
on remote sensing to the writer's (NMS) Landsat Tutorial Workbook (now out-of-print)
for which requests continued over the years to funnel through him, as a consequence
of his name recognition (and confusion as to location). Since its inception, the following have served as Webmasters who also assisted in putting the Tutorial into proper "html" format:
Dr. John Robinson; Mr. William Dickinson, Jr.; Mrs. Nanette Fekete; Ms. Stephanie Richardson; Mr. David Hudgins; Mr. John Bolton; Ms. Laura Rocchio. Their help in this capacity is gratefully recognized by the Primary Writer, N.M. Short, Sr. We also thank Mr. Robert Rush of Numidia, PA for his technical assistance to the principal writer in preparing the inputs to the Web Site during the first 5 years. Mr. Rush has over twenty years of experience in the computer technology
field. He currently operates Webmaster Choice, an international company providing
website design and hosting. He also did a masterful job in training the writer in use of the HomeSite program with which the high level code was written. This input, done at the writer's computer, was then ably tailored for the Net by workers at NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center and Global Scientific and Technology, Inc. (GSTI). In July of 2002, we were most fortunate in getting one of our Web site readers to volunteer to proofread the text portion of the Tutorial for "typos" and other non-technical errors. We are grateful to Mr. Joe Lane, of Brooklyn, NY for performing this vital service. Mr. Lane, was one of the original members of the "Swing n Sway with Sammy Kaye" Big Band, well known in the mid 20th Century; this band today (even after its leader passed away) still plays professional concerts, mostly in the northeast U.S. The following are synoptic biographies of the principal author - also referred to in various Sections as the "writer" or "(NMS)" - of the Remote Sensing Tutorial and of the major topic contributors, plus listings of others involved in the preparation of this Tutorial: In December of 2002, the writer was asked to contribute a lengthy article on his experiences in becoming a remote sensing specialist (summarizing most of his professional career) to a new Web site called The Online Journal of Space Communication, accessed over the Web at this URL address. For those interested, the article, which was part of the 3rd issue of this Journal, is entitled MEMOIRS OF A RETOOLED GEOSCIENTIST. Paul Lowman is a geologist, with degrees from Rutgers and the
University of Colorado. He was hired by NASA in 1959, the first geologist
to be employed by the agency. He took part in the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo,
and Skylab programs as principal investigator for terrain photography. He
was Principal Investigator for a Shuttle Imaging Radar Experiment, covering
the Canadian Shield, in 1984. His current work includes concentration on a digital
map of global tectonic activity, published (Lowman et al., in the Journal
of Geoscience Education, v. 47, p. 428-437, 1999). He has also completed
a book "Exploring Space, Exploring Earth: the Impact of Space Flight on
Geology and Geophysics," for Cambridge University Press.
Dr. Madry received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1986, specializing in the applications of remote sensing and GIS for cultural studies. He has been a Senior Project Manager at the Institute for Technology Development's Space Remote Sensing Center at the NASA Stennis Space Center, was
the Senior Associate Director of the Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis at Rutgers University, and was a member of the Faculty of the International Space University in Strasbourg, France for over ten years. Dr. Madry has been involved in teaching and research in remote sensing and GIS applications for over 15 years, and has conducted a variety of research and application projects in Europe, Africa, and North America. He has been involved
in projects ranging from European archaeology to Mountain Gorilla habitat studies in Rwanda and wildlife management in Kenya's National Parks. He is currently the president of Informatics International, Inc., an international
Geomatics consulting firm in Chapel Hill, NC. He also holds an appointment as a Research Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was awarded the prestigious Russian Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Gold Medal in 1997 for his contributions to international space education. Dr. Mitchell K. Hobish is self-employed as a consulting synthesist, specializing
in scientific and technological strategic planning and outreach. Dr. Hobish has worked with scientists and space agencies world-wide to develop concepts and approaches for efficient utilization of analytical laboratory methods for space exploration that also have high spin-off potential for terrestrial use. He is a partner (with his wife, Janice) in New Realities, LLC, a consulting
firm dedicated to making technical and scientific information accessible to the general public. Dr. Hobish holds undergraduate degrees in English (with a minor in electrical engineering) from the University of Rochester, and biology, from Tulane University. He received his doctorate in biochemistry from the Johns
Hopkins University. Dr. Hobish has performed research in the physicochemical rigins of the genetic code, the origins of chirality in biomolecules, and the thermodynamics of small molecule binding to biomacromolecules. When not working, he builds small robots and is an amateur radio operator. He also does volunteer work for the IEEE and AIAA in the areas of student outreach and education. His
Web page may be viewed here. Subsequent to a varied history in NASA, including Project Manager of the Scout launch vehicle, and Director of Engineering for the Apollo Program, Mr. Stoney began his career in satellite remote sensing as Director of
NASAâs Earth Observation Program in 1972, the year that
Landsat 1 was launched. His tenure included the launch
of Landsats 2 and 3, the definition and development
of the Thematic Mapper, the development of NOAA's TIROS,
and GEOS satellites and sensors, and the management
of the Large Area Crop Inventory Experiment (LACIE)
and the Application Research programs which initiated
the development of multispectral analysis technologies.
Since leaving NASA he has worked for RCA and GE supporting
the development of the EOS program and for MITRE and
now Mitretek supporting the current and future Landsat
systems. Recently he has been closely involved with
the Stennis Science Commercial Commercial Data Buy Program.
James J. Rosolanka, who recently retired from the USAF,
presently works for AMCOMP Corporation as a Senior Systems
Engineer. While in the USAF, he worked in various facets of
the military space field. He began at the Satellite Test Center, Sunnyvale Air Force Station, California (now Onizuka Air Force Base) in 1980 supporting spacecraft operations. In 1984, he
transferred to Space Systems Division, Los Angeles Air Force
Base where he worked with the Secretary of the Air Force
Special Projects, and then with the Titan IV Launch Vehicle
Program Office. In 1989, he moved to Colorado to support the
operational testing of the Consolidated Space Operations
Center (CSOC), Falcon Air Force Base (now Schriever Air
Force Base). In 1994, he transferred back to the Space and
Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles Air Force Base, where he
served the Defense Support Program (DSP) office in several
key positions before retiring. He currently works on the Air
Force Satellite Control Network (AFSCN).
Mr. Love received his B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from the University
of Missouri - Rolla. He has experience designing and developing real-time data
acquisition systems deployed on U.S. Navy Submarines. Mr. Love was also responsible
for the development, maintenance, and support of the Common Data Format (CDF)
which is used by the space physics community to store scientific data sets.
More recently, he has been providing programming support for NASA GSFCs Regional
Application Center (RAC) program, including the development of the Photo Interpretation
Tool (PIT) used in Appendix B of this Tutorial. Dr. Robinson received his B.S. in Zoology from the University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, He received his MA and Ph.D. in Systematics & Ecology from the
University of Kansas, Lawrence. After completing his Ph.D. he worked at the
Center for Research. Inc. at the University of Kansas with some of the first
Landsat data. He then worked as a Biometrician at the Museum of Natural History,
Smithsonian Institution. Since 1976, he has worked for a number of contractors
at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. He currently works for Hughes STX Corporation.
Over the years, he has worked with data from a variety of platforms and sensors
including Heat Capacity Mapping Mission (HCMM), ), Geostationary Operational
Environmental Satellite (GOES), Landsat, ASAS and AVHRR. Dr. Robinson worked
in the Eastern Regional Remote Sensing and Applications program at Goddard Space
Flight Center during the late 1970's. This program was designed to help transfer
remote sensing technology to state and local governments, and the private sector.
He was a member of a two person team, training members of the Chinese Academy
of Sciences in remote sensing when his employer installed the first Landsat
ground station in China. Dr. Weissel received his BSc (Hons.) in Geophysics from
the University of Sydney (Australia) in 1968, and his
PhD in Marine Geophysics from the University of New
South Wales in 1972. Since then he has worked at the
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University
in Palisades, New York, where he is currently a Doherty
Senior Scholar. His research interests focus on the
evolution of landscapes and seascapes, with a particular
emphasis on slope failure and landslide hazards. Application
of remote sensing techniques to the detection and mapping
of landslides is an important element of this research.
NASA supports Dr. Weissel's work through its Topography
and Surface Change and Solid Earth and Natural Hazards
research programs. The remote sensing glossary was developed
to help students taking Dr. Weissel's courses on remote
sensing principles and applications at Columbia become
familar with the ever-expanding terminology of the discipline.
Mr. Dickinson received his B.A. in History from the
University of Maryland College Park Campus, specializing
in ancient Roman history and archaeology. He is currently employed by Global Science and Technology. He has several
years of experience designing, developing, and maintaining
websites and has a solid understanding of multiple
computer systems and their relation to the World Wide
Web. He has recently served as Coordinator for the Regional Applications Center (RAC)
program in Code 935 at NASA GSFC, and has been the Editor and
Webmaster for the Remote Sensing Tutorial project
for the past 3 years. Col. Kirkpatrick received his B.S. from the Air Force Academy in 1974, an MS from Purdue University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas in 1988. His service includes instructorships at the Air Staff and Command College and the Air War College.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PRIMARY WRITER
Dr. Nicholas M. Short, Sr. (NMS) (nmshort@ptd.net)
Nicholas Martin Short, a native of St. Louis, MO, is a geologist
who received degrees in that field from St. Louis
University (B.S., 1951), Washington University (M.A., 1954), and
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D., 1958);
he also spent a year in graduate studies in the geosciences
at The Pennsylvania State University. In his early
post-graduate career, he worked for Gulf Research
& Development Co., Pittsburgh, PA (Wyoming Oil project), the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, California (Underground Nuclear Explosions; Plowshare Program),
and the University of Houston (Associate Professor of Geochemistry). During the 1960s he
specialized in the effects of underground nuclear
explosions and asteroidal impacts on rocks (helping to establish the new field of Shock
Metamorphism), and was one of the original Principal
Investigators of the Apollo 11 and 12 moon rocks.
He joined NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in 1969
as one of the first discipline specialists supporting
the Landsat program and related remote sensing projects. Over the next 19 years, he authored Planetary Geology,
The Landsat Tutorial Workbook, and The HCMM
Anthology and co-authored Volcanic Landforms and Surface Features, Mission to Earth:
Landsat Views the World, and Geomorphology from
Space, along with 85 article-length publications dealing mainly
with geological topics. After retiring from
NASA in 1988, Dr. Short set up the remote sensing at Bloomsburg
University in Pennsylvania, teaching there until 1992. From 1992 to 1994 he was a national Sigma Xi lecturer. He began work on the Remote Sensing Tutorial in 1995. GUEST WRITERS & CONSULTANTS
Dr. Paul D. Lowman Jr. (lowman@denali.gsfc.nasa.gov)
Section 12: The Human Remote Senser in Space - Astronaut PhotographyScott Madry (madry@informatics.org
... http://www.informatics.org/madry/madry.html)
Section
15: GIS Burgundy, France application studyDr. Mitchell K. Hobish, Consultant (mkh@sciential.com)
Section 16: Earth Systems Science - Earth Science Enterprise and the EOS ProgramWilliam E. Stoney (wstoney@mitretek.org)
Section 21: Remote Sensing in the 21st CenturyJim Rosalanka (jrosalanka@worldnet.att.net)
Appendix A: The Modern History of SpaceJeff Love, PIT Developer (love@gst.com)
Appendix B: Interactive Image ProcessingDr. Jon W. Robinson (robinson@ltpmail.gsfc.nasa.gov)
Appendix C: Principal Components AnalysisJeff Weissel (jeffw@ldeo.columbia.edu)
GlossaryEDITOR (1998-2000)
William B. Dickinson Jr. (wdickins@gst.com)
Webmaster PUBLICATIONS & WEB SERVICES
Colonel (Retired) Doug Kirkpatrick (dkirkpat@clsp.uswest.net)
SPONSORING ORGANIZATIONS
Code
935 Applied Information Sciences Branch, NASA GSFC
United
States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, CO
Global Science & Technology, Inc.COORDINATORS
OAO Corporation
OAO - a full service provider of aerospace engineering
and information technology (IT) services, specializing
in leading edge technology. An American success story,
OAO Corporation started as a minority-owned small business
in 1973 serving NASA. Today, OAO has offices nationwide
and is one of the fastest growing IT companies in the
nation. OAO's customers include many Fortune 500 companies
as well as Federal, state, and local government agencies.
The company's Defense Systems Group began operations
in Colorado Springs, providing a broad range of services
to NORAD, U. S. Space Command, Air Force Space Command,
the Joint National Test Facility, and the United States
Air Force Academy. For more information visit the OAO
web site at www.oao.com.
Northern NEF, Inc. (NEF) is a small business firm with primary corporate
offices in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Other offices are located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania; Denver, Colorado; Dayton, Ohio; Ankara, Turkey; and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Established in 1987, the company has grown from a start-up in Colorado Springs to an expanding worldwide business. Their participation in this Tutorial was short-lived.
. Their participation in this Tutorial was short-lived.
Northern NEF
NOTE: The Next button below takes you to the "Get Acquainted Quiz".
Collaborators: Code 935
NASA GSFC, GST, USAF
Academy