Hi and welcome back! This update is about a current event that has to do with NASA. I am choosing to write about how the recent fires in California can be seen by the ASTER instrument.
This article, published by JPL on November 4th, talks about the Kincade fire in Sonoma County and how it can be seen by ASTER in space. ASTER is NASA's Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer that lives on the Terra satellite. The Kincade fire burned over 77,000 acres and over 370 structures. ASTER can pick up on the current hotspots and all the atmospheric environmental pollutants of the fire. ASTER also has an extremely high spatial resolution of 15 to 90 meters. This allows for extraordinarily precise data for monitoring of the Earth's surface.
Engineers on ASTER, which launched in 1999, designed the tool to be able to capture 14 different wavelengths on the electromagnetic spectrum. The design and assembly of ASTER was a group effort. ASTER was designed in three subsystems: the Visible and Near Infrared (VNIR), the Shortwave Infrared (SWIR), and the Thermal Infrared (TIR). Each of these subsystems fit together like a puzzle. This required a large and cooperative group effort for everybody involved.
ASTER has been orbiting for about 20 years, and it continues to record very accurate and helpful information. This means that we will continue to have data on the Earth's changing surface for the foreseeable future, which will be helpful in evaluating the effects of overall climate change, as well as the effects of widespread natural disasters like the Kincade fire. If we can recognize trends of human behavior that have a negative impact on the environment, we can come up with the tools to change those trends. ASTER is just a very helpful tool to evaluate environmental changes from space.
After reading about the ASTER instrument, I saw some things that I could take to my own JPL project. The main was that the instrument was broken down into smaller components. I think that is a very effective way to designate time and brainpower. We started breaking up our group into smaller teams, but it kind of lost steam after a while. I am going to go back to my group and really push for solid smaller teams that have a set objective. In the end, we will come together and assemble the components to make a cool ping pong ball launcher that works!
Here's the link to the original article: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7532
Here's the link to the ASTER resource: https://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/instrument.asp
And that's my TED talk. Well, not really, but that's my post. Hope it made sense. ASTER is a really cool instrument, and it's crazy how on fire California is. Bye!