NASA EMIT Project: Mineral Dust Source Imaging from the ISS

EMIT is an imaging spectrometer on the International Space Station measuring surface mineralogy in Earth's arid dust source regions between 52° N and 52° S latitude. The Level 1B data product provides at-sensor calibrated radiance across 285 spectral bands from 381 to 2493 nanometers at a 60-meter spatial resolution. Each data granule covers an area of approximately 75 by 75 kilometers.

Use Cases

• Modeling global dust source composition and emission based on surface mineralogy measurements.
• Calibrating atmospheric models using detailed spectral radiance data from 285 bands.
• Mapping surface geology in arid regions using high-resolution imaging spectroscopy.
• Analyzing the relationship between topography, solar geometry, and surface reflectance using the observation file data.

Strengths

• Provides high spectral resolution data with ~7.5 nm resolution across 285 bands.
• Offers a spatial resolution of 60 meters for detailed surface analysis.
• Each data granule covers a large contiguous area of approximately 75 by 75 km.
• Data includes ancillary layers for geometry, topography, and geolocation using WGS84.

Limitations

• Data acquisition was paused from September 13, 2022, through January 6, 2023, due to a power issue.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and total dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

NASA Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) instrument on the International Space Station.

Collection Method

Imaging spectroscopy measurements taken from the ISS.

Time Range

Data acquisition began in 2022, with a known gap from September 2022 to January 2023.

Freshness

Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Geography

Sunlit regions between 52° N latitude and 52° S latitude, focusing on arid dust source regions.