Status of ASTER on Terra (fwd)

[Bruce Raup]

All,

- ASTER SWIR bands (except for band 4?) are unusable
- near-global ASTER DEM to be available Spring 2009

See below for more details.
Bruce

-- 
Bruce H. RAUP
National Snow and Ice Data Center
University of Colorado
449 UCB,  Boulder, CO 80309
Phone:  303-492-8814
http://cires.colorado.edu/~braup/

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Michael Abrams <Michael.J.Abrams at jpl.nasa.gov>
Date: October 2, 2008 1:02:09 PM GMT-07:00
To: iwg-everybody at lists.nasa.gov
Subject: [iwg-everybody] Status of ASTER on Terra

ASTER Status Report

In April 2008, ASTER's SWIR bands became saturated due to heating of the
detector. We have made several attempts to correct the problem, but with very
limited success. We are continuing attempts to resurrect the SWIR. ALL other
ASTER functions are performing nominally: VNIR bands, stereo data acquisition,
and multispectral TIR.

Level-1 products created from data acquired after April 23, 2008 exhibit
saturation and/or striping in the SWIR data. The VNIR and TIR bands in Level-1
data are fully usable, as are all higher-level products created from VNIR and
TIR data. Our archive is about 1,500,000 scenes, growing at about 500/day. (For
further details, go to: http://edcdaac.usgs.gov/news/aster_user_advisory.asp)

In the spring of 2009 we will be releasing a Global DEM, produced by
stereo-correlating the entire ASTER archive. The DEM will cover all the land
surface up to latitude 83 degrees North/South. The data will be freely available
by ftp as 23,000 1 x 1 degree tiles, with 30m postings. We will send out an
announcement as soon as the DEM is available.
I am happy to answer any questions about using/scheduling/ordering ASTER data!


-- 
Michael Abrams
ASTER Science Team Leader
Group Supervisor, Land Surface Processes
NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Mail Stop 183-501
4800 Oak Grove Dr.
Pasadena, CA 91109
818-354-0937  FAX: 818-354-5148
michael.j.abrams at jpl.nasa.gov