MASTER Airborne Sensor Flight Lines and Campaign Data

NASA's MASTER airborne sensor flight line data provides geospatial polygons and contextual information for campaigns from 1998 to the present. The dataset, a joint project of NASA's Ames Research Center, JPL, and EROS, includes flight dates, bounding coordinates, site names, investigators, and campaign attributes. It is available as shapefiles, GeoJSON, and KMZ files for GIS visualization.

Use Cases

• Identifying flight lines for a specific geographic area and date using bounding coordinates and site names.
• Linking raw sensor data to specific science campaigns and principal investigators listed in the flight logs.
• Visualizing the spatial footprint and temporal sequence of airborne campaigns in GIS software using the provided shapefiles or KMZ files.
• Studying the deployment history and operational scope of the MASTER instrument since its first flight in 1998.

Strengths

• Contains a long-term record of flight operations spanning from 1998 to ongoing deployments.
• Provides multiple geospatial data formats (shapefile, GeoJSON, KMZ) for direct use in GIS applications.
• Includes contextual campaign details such as associated investigators and flight attributes beyond simple geometry.

Limitations

• Core descriptive facts like row count, file size, and complete column list are unavailable from all provided sources.
• Conflicting 'last updated' dates (2026-03-13 and 2025-04-18) across platform entries create uncertainty about freshness.

Provenance

Source

NASA Airborne Science Program, involving the Airborne Sensor Facility at Ames Research Center, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the Earth Resources Observation and Science Center (EROS).

Collection Method

Compiled from flight logs and mission planning data for the MASTER Facility Instrument Collection.

Time Range

1998 to present

Freshness

2026-03-13 00:49:02.161279

Geography

Global, based on the locations of airborne science campaigns.