1998 TECHNOLOGY VIDEOTAPES |
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Tape Title | Record ID | Date Produced | TRT: |
Synopsis |
| NASA TECHNOLOGY HELPS SMITHSONIAN PRESERVE THE STAR
SPANGLED BANNER | G98-053 | 11/10/98 | 00:07:11 | A NASA infrared camera developed for space research will assist the Smithsonian Institute in its three year project to preserve a national treasure, the Star Spangled Banner. Despite receiving the best possible care at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History (NMAH), the flag is deteriorating from decades of exposure to light, pollution and temperature fluctuations. The camera, a prototype candidate for the Mars 2003 Missions, was built at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. It will make images of the flag using infrared light to identify deteriorated and soiled areas not obvious to the human eye. On November 6, 1998, the camera, developed by Dr. David Glenar at Goddard and called the Acousto-Optic Imaging Spectrometer (AImS), began making images of the flag. This process will end November 15. |
TAPE CONTENTS: |
| ITEM (1): THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER - B-roll of the Star-Spangled Banner hanging in the "Flag Hall" of the National American History Museum (NAHM), in Washington, DC. Footage courtesy of NAHM.
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| ITEM (2): PRESERVING A NATIONAL TREASURE - B-roll of Dr. John Hillman and crew working with a Mars Proto-type camera called the Acousto-Optic Imaging Spectrometer (AImS) . The camera will make 72 separate image data sets which will be pieced together forming a mosaic of the flag. The hall has been sealed from the public so no direct light enters the hall and interferes with the images taken by the camera. During this entire process, visitors to the museum are still able to view the work being done to preserve the flag.
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| ITEM (3): MARS 2003 MISSIONS - B-roll of the surface of Mars. The AImS team is developing a demonstration camera for the Mars Instrument Development Program funded by NASA headquarters. Under this program, a camera using AImS technology will be a candidate for use on Mars lander missions in 2003 and beyond. The camera would be used to determine the mineral composition of Martian rocks. Courtesy of the NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory |
| ITEM (4): PLANETARY EXAMPLES - Planetary images acquired in July 1994 using an earlier generation camera, mated to an adaptive optics telescope. This camera was similar to the one used to image the Star-Spangled Banner.
a) Jupiter - The Jupiter images show impact sites from fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, shortly after it's collision with Jupiter. Since the AOTF camera is tunable, it can acquire an image at any desired wavelength within its tuning range. The left hand image at 825 nanometers wavelength shows a small cloud feature (white) and next to it an impact site (dark). The right hand image shows the same scene at a different wavelength (897 nanometers) where atmospheric methane absorbs heavily. Here reflected light comes from higher in the atmosphere. The low-altitude cloud has now disappeared and the impact site appears as a high altitude plume.
b) Saturn - The Saturn images show a similar result. The top image shows reflected light from the cloud tops and the rings. The lower image is again at the wavelength where methane absorbs most of the reflected light from the cloudtops. Here the planet appears dark relative to the rings which are primarily water ice. Two of Saturn's moons also appear in the lower image.
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| ITEM (5): INTERVIEW EXCERPTS - DR. JOHN HILLMAN, SENIOR SCIENTIST, LABORATORY FOR EXTRATRESTIAL PHYSICS, NASA GODDARD
SPACE FLIGHT CENTER
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| ITEM (6): INTERVIEW EXCERPTS - SUSAN THOMASSEN KRAUSE, CHIEF CONSERVATOR, STAR-SPANGLED BANNER PROJECT, NATIONAL AMERICAN HISTORY MUSEUM, WASHINGTON, DC
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