MASTER: Airborne Multispectral Imagery, Southwest US, 2011

MASTER Level 1B data products contain georeferenced multispectral imagery from seven NASA ER-2 aircraft flights over the southwestern U.S. in November 2011. The dataset provides calibrated radiance across 50 spectral bands, from visible to thermal infrared wavelengths, at approximately 50-meter spatial resolution. It also includes flight paths, instrument configuration details, and browse images.

Use Cases

• Calibrating satellite sensor data using the airborne instrument's 50-band spectral radiance measurements.
• Analyzing land surface temperature and thermal properties from thermal infrared band data.
• Creating georeferenced base maps for environmental studies using the provided KMZ files.
• Studying spectral signatures of surface materials across visible to long-wave infrared wavelengths.

Strengths

• Provides data from 50 distinct spectral bands covering a broad wavelength range from 0.460 to 12.879 micrometers.
• Includes ancillary data such as flight paths and instrument configuration for seven specific flights.
• Data is georeferenced and calibrated to radiance, suitable for quantitative analysis.

Limitations

• Metadata completeness is low; column names, row counts, and exact file sizes are not provided.
• Conflicting 'last updated' dates (2011-11-16 vs. 2026-04-10) create uncertainty about data currency.
• Spatial coverage is limited to a specific two-week campaign in the southwestern U.S.

Provenance

Source

NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center (formerly Dryden), coordinated by ORNL_CLOUD.

Collection Method

Data collected by the MODIS/ASTER Airborne Simulator (MASTER) instrument aboard a NASA ER-2 aircraft.

Time Range

2011-11-02 to 2011-11-16

Freshness

2026-04-10 01:32:11.950547

Geography

Southwestern United States