2002 EARTH SCIENCE VIDEOTAPES |
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Tape Title | Record ID |
Date Produced | TRT: |
Synopsis |
| CITIUS, ALTIUS, FORTIUS: 30 YEARS OF NASA'S REMOTE
SENSING EXPERIENCE SHINES AT 2002 OLYMPICS | G02-010A | 2/8/02 | 00:28:53 | 2002 marks the thirty year anniversary of Landsat, a
family of Earth observing satellites that's helped re-write the book
about what we know about the processes of change on our home planet.
During that time, NASA has refined its technologies and broadened its
horizons. On orbit now are not only the latest and most advanced
Landsat platform to date, but also a suite of other remote sensing
instruments, each designed to collect vital information about the
interconnected systems that define the Earth.
The thirty-year Landsat milestone coincides with the Winter Olympics
in Salt Lake City. As eyes around the world turn to that snow-
covered scene, the space agency releases a remarkable tour of that
city in Utah, composed of images collected by space-based
instruments. And while the sights themselves are almost as compelling
as the competition on the snow and ice below, the scientific
opportunities are genuinely world class.
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TAPE CONTENTS: |
| ITEM (1): Citius, Altius,
Fortius (Reporter Package) - Swifter, higher, stronger--
and that's to say nothing of the athletes competing this year at the
Salt Lake City Olympic games. In terms of world-class performance,
NASA's Earth Observing System is clearly a medal contender.
This fly-by shows several of the Olympic venues as seen by a powerful
satellite called Landsat 7. But images like this merely describe
NASA's larger Earth observing efforts. The fleet also includes a
small instrument with an impressive success record called SeaWiFS.
It's a top contender in measuring the colors of Earth. Since
scientists use color as a direct indicator of life processes, this
satellite's value isn't measured by mere size. A recently released
assessment of the global carbon cycle is a first--a new world record,
if you will.
But technologies like Landsat and SeaWiFs are only part of the story.
By studying how planetary processes change over time, experts are
starting to understand how they function at fundamental levels.
That's where models like this come in to play. This remarkable scene
shows a portion of a computer simulation called NSIPP--the NASA
Seasonal to Interannual Prediction Project. NSIPP predicts what the
future might be, simulating the Earth's climate inside the silicon
brain of some of the most powerful computers in the world.
In science as in competitive athletics, there are always surprises.
To that end, NASA salutes the athletes of the 2002 Olympic games. See
you in Salt Lake City.
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| ITEM (2): Olympic Venues Seen
from Space - How can you see Salt Lake City's Olympic venues
in twenty seconds? Try this. We're taking you on a fly-over of the
region via the remarkable eyes of Landsat 7,NASA's land mapping
champion. Scattered around the map you'll see a number of colored
push-pins, designating various Olympic event locations. This scene
shows surface features as small as fifteen meters--a target from
space proportionally smaller in scale than even the remarkably small
biathlon target in the games. Planetary surface features in this
sequence have been exaggerated vertically by a factor of six to more
clearly show their contours.
NOTE TO NEWS PRODUCERS: Images for this
clip appear in two versions.
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| ITEM (3): A Leisurely Tour of
Salt Lake City - We're looking south as we begin this
inspiring journey. Using imagery captured by Landsat 7 on February 8,
2001, the peaks of the Utah Rockies ring the Olympic sites in and
around Salt Lake City like minarets. As we see here, relatively
localized regions can be studied in geographical context to
surrounding areas, affording experts in a variety of fields a wide
range of land management and scientific information. Features like
roads and buildings appear clearly across the plains, while at the
same time we can see complex yet subtle characteristics about the
surrounding landscape.
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| ITEM (4): The Seasons of Salt
Lake City - Landsat 7 monitors the Earth constantly,
recording an ever-lengthening and vital history of our planet's
process of change over time. In this sequence we look at the greater
Salt Lake City region through the four seasons. We begin in winter,
traveling south to north, facing west. Landsat 7 collected the data
for these images on the following dates:
Winter: February 8, 2001
Spring: May 28, 2000
Summer: July 31, 2000
Fall: October 19, 2000
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| ITEM (5): Then and Now: A 28
Year Landsat Comparison - By watching our planet from space
over time, experts can literally track how the Earth is changing due
to human and natural causes. Landsat 7 took the most recent image.
The older comparison scene comes from its elder sibling, a spacecraft
called ERTS-1, or Earth Resources Technology Satellite. To date the
Landsat program has been one of the most successful long-term remote
sensing efforts in history. This sequence and the two that follow
alternate between two images several times. Landsat collected the
data for the first on August 7, 1972 and the second on July 31, 2000.
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| ITEM (6): The Richest Hole in
the Earth - Officially it's called the Bingham Canyon Mine,
but regardless of its title this is the place where money comes out
of the ground. To date, it is the single biggest producer of copper
in the world. It's the largest human-dug hole on the planet,
stretching approximately 3/4 of a mile down and more than 2 1/2 miles
wide. It's so large that along with the Great Wall of China it's one
of the two human influenced surface features that are visible with
the naked eye by astronauts on orbit. In World War II copper output
just from this one mine produced more than one third of all the
copper used by the Allies.
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| ITEM (7): The Great Salt
Lake--Vast and Vibrant - The Great Salt Lake does not have
any outlets; water that finds its way into the lake basin can only
leave by evaporation. As a result, the dissolved minerals left behind
makes the water more than eight times as salty as ocean water. The
basin holding it is wide and flat, averaging from 13 to 24 feet in
depth, with shallow slopes around most of the perimeter. As a result,
increased inflows of water do not cause the depth to change so much
as they cause the edges to spread out. Heavy snow melts and rainy
seasons can have pronounced changes on the shape of the lake.
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| ITEM (8): The Yield: Remote
Sensing Charts the Biosphere in Motion - NASA designed
SeaWiFS to study ocean processes. But the mission has surpassed its
initial design goals. By carefully calibrating the sensor, experts
have been able to use SeaWiFS data to monitor life on land, too.
Throughout the duration of the project, affiliated researchers have
produced a series of high-resolution images to help them better
understand seasonal changes in ocean and land-based plant life in
regions around the U.S
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| ITEM (9): A Gold Medal
Climate Model - In the heart of a computer, complex programs
can simulate the dynamic characteristics of climate at a vastly
accelerated rate as compared to the real world. Here you see the
result: virtual climate taking place in artificial time. These images
are the result of NSIPP, the NASA Seasonal to Interannual Prediction
Project. It's a massive computer simulation. We begin with a scene
that shows sea surface temperatures alone. Then we add a layer of
virtual water vapor. In the last scene we add data showing relative
soil moisture. Notice how the area around Salt Lake City appears
mostly brown. It turns out that water vapor and soil moisture are
intimately related; they function as a feedback loop. Dry soil tends
to provoke limited rainfall, thus remaining dry. Moist soil tends to
coax precipitation; hence it tends to stay moist. In this model, we
see the laws of nature played out in virtual space and time. Computer
time is not arbitrary. Although simulated, it too has dates. This
modeled climate sequence is running on NSIPP data taken from December
1, 2001 to December 1, 2002.
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| ITEM (10): NSIPP: Climate in
a Computer - NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center developed
NSIPP. It uses real-world sea surface temperature measurements to set
its simulated weather patterns in motion. In some ways, these
visualizations are like timelines that could have been: they use
historical ocean temperature measurements to initiate simulated
sequences of climatological events. By comparing those simulated
events to the actual historical record of climate and weather, the
science team can make refinements to their model, thus gaining a
deeper understanding of how the different processes fit together.
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| ITEM (11): Wonderglobe:
Painting the Planet with a New Brush - The world is a big
place and even from space, it's not easy to see the whole thing at
the same time. But using an instrument called MODIS onboard the Earth
observing flagship Terra, a new mosaic of the entire planet has just
been completed. It shows the colors of Earth in superb, idealized
detail, capturing just about the planet's entire surface with a
spatial resolution of approximately one kilometer. In this sequence
we start in close to the greater area around Salt Lake City and pull
back to reveal the rest of the Earth.
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| ITEM (12): Landsat:
Continuing a Legacy of Earth Observation - Landsat 7 is the
latest in a series of satellites. From an altitude of 438 miles (730
kilometers), Landsat 7 can see surface features as small as 15
meters, providing world-wide land resource information for a diverse
range of uses. The only scientific instrument onboard the satellite
is the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus, a passive sensor that measure
reflected solar radiation (light) from the surface of the Earth.
Landsat 7 is part of a global research effort NASA calls the Earth
Science Enterprise, which seeks to acquire a long term understanding
of the changes to our planet. NASA officially called the first
Landsat satellite the Earth Resources Technology Satellite, or
ERTS-1, on July 23, 1972. Since then the program has continued to
pave the way in research and data acquisition techniques about the
surface of our planet.
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| ITEM (13): SeaWiFS: Big
Returns from a Small Package
- SeaWiFS (Sea-Viewing Wide Field of View Sensor) is the
scientific portion of the OrbView-2 satellite, orbiting The Earth at
an altitude of 423 miles (705 kilometers). By providing a regular
picture of the planet's color, SeaWiFS helps researchers learn about
the state of the world's interconnected ecosystems. OrbView-2
blasted into space on August 1, 1997 lifted by an extended Pegasus
rocket. SeaWiFS is considered a low cost mission, many orders of
magnitude less expensive than other Earth observing instruments. In
scientific terms, however, this little instrument has proved to be
one of the space agency's star performers, it's highly focused
mission parameters netting huge scientific returns for researchers
studying a wide variety of questions.
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| ITEM (14): Terra: The Modern
Flagship of the Earth Observing System - Terra is a
multinational orbiting research platform managed at NASA's Goddard
Space Flight Center. By synchronizing a sophisticated suite of
sensors and instruments, Terra is helping researchers pursue some of
the grandest and most complex questions about the nature of our home
planet. The instruments onboard can simultaneously study clouds,
water vapor, aerosol particles, trace gases, terrestrial and ocean
properties, and systemic interactions on a planetary scale.
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