MASTER Airborne Imagery and Surface Temperature for Southwestern US

Fifty spectral bands of calibrated radiance and derived land surface temperature data were captured by the MODIS/ASTER Airborne Simulator (MASTER) instrument during 11 NASA ER-2 flights. The deployment, coordinated by NASA's Dryden (now Armstrong) Flight Research Center, occurred over a 16-day period in September 2002 across the southwestern United States. Data products include Level 1B georeferenced imagery and Level 2 emissivity and temperature maps, accompanied by flight paths, instrument configuration, and browse images.

Use Cases

• Calibrating and validating land surface temperature retrievals from satellite sensors using the 5-band thermal infrared emissivity and temperature products.
• Analyzing surface spectral properties across 50 bands from visible to thermal infrared wavelengths (0.460 to 12.879 µm).
• Studying spatial patterns of radiance and temperature at approximately 50-meter resolution for specific flight paths over the southwestern US.
• Using provided flight paths and instrument configuration metadata to contextualize the georeferenced imagery for specific research sites.

Strengths

• Contains data from 11 distinct flights, providing multiple observational snapshots.
• Offers both raw calibrated radiance (50 bands) and derived geophysical products (emissivity, land surface temperature).
• Covers a broad spectral range from 0.460 to 12.879 micrometers at a high spatial resolution of ~50 meters.

Limitations

• Exact file size and row/observation counts are not provided by any source.
• Sources conflict on the last updated date, listing both 2002-09-26 and 2026-03 13.
• Column names for the core data products are unspecified across all platforms.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Data collected by the MASTER instrument aboard a NASA ER-2 aircraft during 11 coordinated flights.

Time Range

2002-09-10 to 2002-09-26

Freshness

2026-03-13 00:49:33.167926

Geography

Southwestern United States