MASTER Airborne Multispectral Imagery from California Student Campaign

MASTER airborne instrument data provides georeferenced multispectral imagery of calibrated radiance from flights over southern California in June 2014. The dataset contains 50 spectral bands covering wavelengths from 0.460 to 12.879 micrometers at approximately 20-meter spatial resolution. It was collected by the Student Airborne Research Program (SARP) using a NASA DC-8 aircraft, encompassing three flights and 17 flight tracks.

Use Cases

• Land cover classification and change detection using 50 spectral bands across visible, near-infrared, and thermal infrared wavelengths.
• Validation of satellite-derived surface temperature and reflectance products with higher spatial resolution airborne data.
• Analysis of flight path geometry and instrument configuration for airborne campaign planning and data interpretation.
• Educational demonstration of calibrated radiance data processing from raw airborne spectrometer measurements to georeferenced imagery.

Strengths

• Provides high spectral resolution with 50 discrete bands from 0.460 to 12.879 micrometers.
• Offers fine spatial resolution of approximately 20 meters for detailed surface analysis.
• Includes ancillary data such as flight paths, band information, and instrument configuration for context.
• Data is cross-platform, appearing on NASA EarthData and Data.gov, indicating curation and importance.

Limitations

• Specific row counts, file sizes, and complete column names are not provided by any source.
• Sources conflict on the last updated date, with one listing 2014-06-25 and another listing 2026-03 13.
• Primary data format is HDF-4, which may require specialized software for access and analysis.

Provenance

Source

Student Airborne Research Program (SARP), NASA.

Collection Method

Data collected by the MODIS/ASTER Airborne Simulator (MASTER) instrument aboard a NASA DC-8 aircraft.

Time Range

2014-06-23 to 2014-06-25

Freshness

2026-03-13 00:47:21.992844

Geography

Southern California, U.S.