Remote Sensing

Pléiades is an optical observation system consisting of two identical satellites that will deliver 50 cm colour products. Operating on a phased orbit, the Pléiades system will afford a daily revisit capability on any point of the globe, to better address civilian and military requirements.

The Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM), a collaboration between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey, will provide moderate-resolution measurements of Earth's terrestrial and polar regions in the visible, near-infrared, short wave infrared, and thermal infrared. There are two instruments on the spacecraft, the Thermal InfraRed Sensor (TIRS) and the Operational Land Imager (OLI). LDCM will provide continuity with the nearly 40-year long Landsat land imaging data set, enabling people to study many aspects of our planet and to evaluate the dynamic changes caused by both natural processes and human practices. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Hurricane Sandy's Path and development Credit: NASA GOES PROJECT

Can the HIVE continue to be a leading innovative force of visualization systems, despite up-and-coming technology? DEVELOP's HIVE team at Langley Research Center has made several major improvements to its structure and its user-friendly experience in order to stay at the top of the technological line.

In the past 30 years, the Gishwati Forest in northwestern Rwanda has been all but obliterated. Stripped bare to support the resource needs of the country's rapidly growing population and economy, the Gishwati area now suffers from continual landslides, erosion, and flooding. A DEVELOP team of interns at Langley Research Center and Wise County, Virginia applied NASA EOS to monitoring deforestation and reforestation efforts to enhance policy and decision making in Rwanda.

The newly launched Aquarius sensor, on board the SAC-D satellite, measures the salinity of ocean surfaces. Currently, nearshore coastline data from Aquarius is not accounted for due to land surface interruptions. The Langley DEVELOP team's task is to create a method for testing how close to the coastline Aquarius observations can be made effective through an analysis of the Amazon River Delta's low salinity plume.

This summer, DEVELOP interns at Ames Research Center utilized interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) to analyze glacial dynamics with respect to climate in the Aleutian Islands, Alaska. The project's goal was to examine the size and speed of various glaciers in the Aleutian Archipelago and compare them to temperature and precipitation records.

Will the OCO-2 satellite show emission reductions in California as mandated in Assembly Bill 32 (AB 32) after its launch in February of 2013? How effective are policies implemented in AB-32 for reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2020? The DEVELOP team at JPL created a top down CO2 monitoring tool ready for implementation with the OCO-2 launch. This methodology will allow end-users to see how OCO-2 will observe carbon reductions.

Can remote sensing help ordinary people in small communities, such as farmers and indigenous people, to protect their own land? DEVELOP interns at the Langley Research Center used open source software with NASA EOS and the Chinese-Brazilian CBERS 2B satellite to monitor deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest. The project demonstrated how open source software can be easily accessed by small organizations and communities to save resources and improve decision making.

El Departmento del Valle del Cauco, Colombia witnesses numerous fires every year endangering ecosystems, infrastructure, and human life. Because many of the fires begin from anthropogenic sources, a fire prediction tool made available to the public could reduce the risk of loss. The goal of this project is to create a model that will correlate environmental factors from NASA EOS with historical fire locations to create a map of the spatial probability of fire ignitions for community awareness.