MASTER Airborne Hyperspectral Microwave Sensor Data from Central US and Pacific

NASA's MASTER instrument collected Level 1B and Level 2 data during 10 ER-2 aircraft flights from October 18 to November 13, 2024. The dataset includes georeferenced multispectral imagery across 50 bands and derived land surface temperature and emissivity products. It was produced by ORNL_CLOUD and distributed via NASA Earthdata.

Use Cases

• Analyze land surface temperature and emissivity in five thermal infrared bands to study urban heat islands or agricultural water stress.
• Classify surface types using calibrated radiance from 50 spectral bands covering 0.460 to 12.879 micrometers.
• Validate prototype planetary boundary-layer mission concepts by correlating flight path data with thermodynamic and moisture regimes captured across diverse terrains.
• Fuse L1B multispectral imagery at 50-meter resolution with complementary onboard lidar and passive sensor data for multi-sensor environmental analysis.

Strengths

• Data covers 10 distinct flights, providing multiple observational snapshots.
• Includes 50 spectral bands of calibrated radiance, offering detailed spectral information.
• Covers a wide geographic transect from Arkansas to California and the eastern Pacific Ocean.

Limitations

• Spatial resolution is approximately 50 meters, which may be coarse for fine-scale feature analysis.
• Temporal coverage is limited to a one-month campaign in late 2024, lacking long-term seasonal data.
• Primary data formats are HDF-4 and HDF-5, which require specialized libraries for processing.

Provenance

Source

NASA Earthdata, ORNL_CLOUD

Collection Method

Airborne campaign using the MODIS/ASTER Airborne Simulator (MASTER) instrument aboard a NASA ER-2 aircraft.

Time Range

2024-10-18 to 2024-11-13

Freshness

Data collection ended on 2024-11-13, making it recent.

Geography

Central United States from Arkansas to California, the U.S. west coast, and the eastern Pacific Ocean.