The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER)

The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is a multispectral imaging radiometer scheduled to fly in Earth orbit in 1998 on NASA's Earth Observation System platform. The instrument will have 14 spectral bands from the visible to thermal infrared wavelength regions with high spectral and spatial resolution and with along-track stereoscopic capability. ASTER imagery will be used to study such phenomena as Earth surface properties, elements of the surface heat balance, cloud cover characteristics, glacier and sea ice extent, patterns of vegetation and land use, volcanoes, coral reefs and coastal processes, geology and topography, and hydrology. ASTER will have three separate radiometer subsystems, each with a swath width of 60 km. Any point on the globe will be accessible at least once every 16 days for the short wavelength infrared and thermal infrared subsystems, and once every five days for the visible and near infrared subsystem. Instrument and spacecraft resources are allocated to support an 8 percent average duty cycle, corresponding to over 700 60 by 60-km scenes per day. ASTER data will be acquired and processed according to specific user requirements over its five-year mission.