National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Sensor Measurement Concepts Development in the context of wildfire monitoring:

NASA's Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) mission developed technologies designed to enable the development of future earth imaging with increased performance and reduced cost and mass. In particular, the EO-1 mission has flown the Advanced Land Imager (ALI), the Hyperion hyperspectral imager, and the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectrometer Array (LEISA) Atmospheric Corrector (LAC). Equipped with these instruments, EO-1 has been successful in helping develop sensor measurement concepts for wildfires.

Data Acquisition and Management in the context of wildfire monitoring: As a general example, after measurement concepts have been developed, sensor webs may be created to enable the autonomous collection of and communication between ground and space-based observations, thus supporting rapid response to wildfires and volcanic activity.

Example: Dan Mandl's project, A High Performance, Onboard Multicore Intelligent Payload Module for Orbital and Suborbital Remote Sensing Missions, utilizes onboard technologies to improve onboard processing capabilities for high data rate missions, such as HyspIRI. In particular, a concept called the Intelligent Payload Module has been developed to determine which data to collect based on the supporting spacecraft's environment. For example, when indications of volcanic events or wild fires are detected, the spacecraft would gather information specific to thermal phenomena, such as extent and spectra.

The concept has already been shown to be useful for the Earth Observing 1 (EO-1) mission, where over 5,000 onboard products have been successfully generated. The following image comes from a report by Mandl, et al.

Data Product Generation in the context of wildfire monitoring: Once data is collected, it may be used to create hotspot images and other visuals which map the temperature distributions of lava flows and forest fires. Data products from the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) mission, including images taken by the Hyperion hyperspectral and Advanced Land Imager (ALI) multispectral instruments, are available to the public via the U.S. Geological Survey EROS Data Center and EO-1 websites.

The following images taken by the ALI instrument, for example, are images regarding forest fire applications from Tuscon, Arizona/Aspen (left), Robert, Montana (center), and Simi Valley, California (right).

Images retrieved via the EO-1 website.

Data Exploitation for Science and Applications in the context of wildfire monitoring: Data products are implemented to advance understanding of past, present, and future fire activities. Possible applications include displays mapping the source and flow of volcanoes, global information systems, and other collaborative monitoring systems.

As a particular example, the extended EO-1 mission encompasses a partnership between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey, which institutes the commercial sale of images taken by the ALI and Hyperion instruments. This widespread availability of EO-1 imagery has then allowed an increase of awareness to new science opportunities, and a maximized usage of EO-1 technologies.