March 12, 1998
AirMISR Flight of 12 March 1998, Edwards, CA
A general description of the Airborne Multi-angle Imaging Spectro-Radiometer (AirMISR) is given on the AirMISR page.
The images included below are from AirMISR operational flight No.3 over NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards, California. The primary target for the day was the snow-covered area at Mammoth Lake, at the southern end of the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. However, because the Mammoth area was cloud-covered, a decision was made to fly instead over the backup target area at Dryden. Whenever possible, one or two backup flight plans are prepared in case the primary flight plan cannot occur, usually for reasons of weather.
The Dryden flight occurred in the late morning of 12 March 1998. Dryden is in the Mojave desert, at an altitude of approximately 1,300 meters, and is about 2 hours drive north of Los Angeles. Rogers Dry lake, a large usually dry salt pan dominates the scene in an otherwise relatively featureless desert (that is, as viewed from a high-flying aircraft.) Rogers Dry Lake is the location of NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center and the Edwards Air Force Base. The NASA ER-2 aircraft on which AirMISR flies is based at Dryden.
Each of the images covers an area approximately 10 km on a side, and was acquired from the ER-2 aircraft flying at 20 kilometers altitude. During this single flight, three runs were made over the target area. The first was from noth to south, the second from south to north, and the third from north to south.
The images displayed below are all AirMISR red-band (670 nm) "raw" images in that they have undergone minimal processing at this stage, having not yet been radiometrically calibrated, georectified, or co-registered. The images have been flipped and rotated into the correct geographic orientation with north roughly toward the top. Subsequent processing will georectify the images, eliminating the effects of rapid aircraft pitch, roll, and yaw changes. From the aircraft altitude of 20,000 meters, the nadir (An) views have a resolution of 7 meters.