2000 EARTH SCIENCE VIDEOTAPES |
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Tape Title | Record ID | Date Produced | TRT: |
Synopsis |
| NASA Satellite Data Used Operationally to Help
Combat Fires in the West | G00-084 | 9/12/00 | 00:03:31 | There was no Labor Day holiday for firefighters battling dozens of blazes that have consumed hundreds of thousands of acres across Montana and Idaho. But fire officials did get some assistance from an unexpected source as scientists from NASA, NOAA, the USDA Forest Service and the University of Virginia teamed up to provide them with new observations of the fires from NASA's Terra satellite. This marked the first time data from the recently-launched spacecraft were used operationally in a crisis situation.
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TAPE CONTENTS: |
| ITEM (1): MODIS Data Helps Combat Fires - On Sept. 1, scientists from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (Greenbelt, MD) and NOAA began
providing Forest Service officials with daily images acquired by Terra's Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument. The MODIS sensor observes fire regions in 36 different wavelengths of the spectrum, ranging from visible (first image) to thermal infrared light, so it has the capacity to see through the smoke in the atmosphere to detect hot flames on the surface (second image). MODIS has new channels that enable scientists to distinguish flaming fires from still-smoldering burn scars (third image). The first two images were captured August 23, 2000. The third image was taken on September 7, 2000.
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| ITEM (2): MODIS Animation - (MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) - MODIS views the entire surface of the Earth every 1-2 days, making observations in 36 co-registered spectral bands, at moderate resolution (0.25 -1 km), of land and ocean surface temperature, primary productivity, land surface cover, clouds, aerosols, water vapor, temperature profiles, and fires.
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| ITEM (3): TERRA Animation - Terra's primary objective is to study Earth's lands, oceans, air, ice and life functions as a planet-wide system. The fires were set in conjunction with Terra's orbit so that it could best study the results. In particular, its Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Multi-Angle Imaging Spectroradiometer (MISR) instrument look at land surface temperature, fire properties, and aerosols.
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| ITEM (4): TERRA Launch - Terra was launched at 1:57 p.m. EST on December 18, 1999 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.
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