| Instrument: MAS : MODIS Airborne Simulator |
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Associated Platforms NASA ER-2 Related Data Sets View all records related to this instrument Description The MODIS Airborne Simulator (MAS) is a modified Daedalus Wildfire scanning spectrometer which flies on a NASA ER-2 aircraft and provides spectral information similar to that which will be provided by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) scheduled to be launched on the Earth Observing System (EOS)-AM platform in 1998. The principal investigators for MAS are Dr. Michael King (NASA/GSFC) and Dr. Paul Menzel (NOAA/NESDIS). The modified Wildfire instrument was first flown in 1991 in the FIRE Cirrus-II experiment onboard a NASA ER-2 over Kansas and the Gulf coast area. The Wildfire instrument was re-configured to the MAS in 1992 and was flown over the Atlantic Ocean as part of the ASTEX experiment. During 1993, MAS was flown in the southwestern Pacific during TOGA/COARE and CEPEX experiments. In July 1993, MAS was flown over the northeastern United States during the SCAR-A experiment. The MAS is a 50-band spectrometer, but before mid-1994, only 12 bands were used at 8 bit resolution. By October 1999,the MAS was recording information in all 50 visible and infrared spectral bands at 16-bit resolution. From January 1995 to October 1999, the 16 bits resolution was compressed into a 12 bit format. Details of the MAS instrument and data calibration can be found in the MAS level-1B Data User's Guide at http://mas.arc.nasa.gov/reference/guide.html Information about the MAS data and experiments can be found on the MAS Home Page at: http://mas.arc.nasa.gov/ Online Resources http://mas.arc.nasa.gov/reference/guide.html http://mas.arc.nasa.gov/ |
