Answer:
At 10/16/2001 01:43 PM we wrote -
The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and
Reflection Radiometer is one of 5 instruments aboard
the Terra platform that was launched in December,
1999. ASTER was built by a consortium of Japanese
government, industry, and research groups. It has
three spectral bands in the visible near-infrared (VNIR),
six bands in the short-wave infrared (SWIR), and five
bands in the thermal infrared (TIR) regions, with 15,
30, and 90 meters ground resolution respectively. This
combination of wide spectral coverage and high spatial
resolution allows ASTER to discriminate amongst a
large variety of surface materials, ideal for
geological studies. The VNIR subsystem is specifically
endowed with a backward-viewing telescope for
high-resolution stereoscopic observation in the
along-track direction. The ASTER instrument is unique
in two respects: one, it provides multispectral
thermal infrared data of high spatial resolution, and
also the highest spatial resolution surface spectral
reflectance, temperature and emissivity data of all
the Terra instrument sensor systems; and two, because
of its limited duty cycle, data are acquired to
fulfill on-demand data acquisition requests. The ASTER
data products include relative spectral reflectance
and emissivity, surface radiance, temperature,
reflectance and emissivity, brightness
temperature-at-sensor, and digital elevation models.
ASTER data are expected to contribute to a wide array
of application areas including, geology and soils,
vegetation and ecosystem dynamics, hazards monitoring
(volcanoes, wildfires, floods, landslides, and coastal
erosion), land surface climatology, hydrology, and
land cover change.
