Facility Instruments

Several large remote sensing systems are considered as NASA facility instruments, in part because they support multiple science disciplines, and a variety of NASA science objectives. They are supported by managers in the ESD Research and Analysis program, and/or the EOS Project Science Office, and are made available to the wider NASA science community via the flight request process. In most cases, instrument operating and data processing costs are recovered from the requesting individual or their sponsors.

The systems described here reside at either Ames Research Center or the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (noted as ARC or JPL, respectively.)

Title Acronym Contact Person NASA Center Aircraft Type Measurements
Airborne Visible and InfraRed Imaging Spectrometer - 3 AVIRIS-3 (PI) JPL B200 - Dynamic Aviation; G-III; G-V-JSC Spectrometer Radiance from the surface and atmosphere.
Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer AVIRIS-Classic (PI) JPL ER-2 - AFRC; Proteus; Twin Otter; WB-57 - JSC Spectrometer Imagery
Enhanced MODIS Airborne Simulator eMAS (Co-I) NASA GSFC ER-2 - AFRC Spectrometer Imagery
Land, Vegetation and Ice Sensor LVIS (PI) NASA GSFC B200 - LARC; C-130H - WFF; Cessna 402B; Citation; DC-8 - AFRC; P-3 Orion - WFF; Gulfstream III - LaRC; Gulfstream V - JSC; Gulfstream V - NSF; B200 - Dynamic Aviation Lidar Vegetation; Vegetation structure; surface topography; ice and sea ice elevations; ocean surface topography
MODIS/ASTER Airborne Simulator MASTER (Mgr) USRA B-200 - DOE - ARC; DC-8 - AFRC; ER-2 - AFRC; WB-57 - JSC; P-3 Orion - WFF Spectrometer Imagery
National Airborne Sounder Testbed - Interferometer NAST-I (Mgr) NASA LaRC ER-2 - AFRC; Proteus; WB-57 - JSC Interferometer Temperature; Relative Humidity
Next-Generation Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer AVIRIS-NG (PI) JPL ER-2 - AFRC; Twin Otter; Gulfstream III - LaRC; Gulfstream G-5 Spectrometer Imagery
Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar UAVSAR (PI) JPL Gulfstream C-20A (GIII) - AFRC; Gulfstream III - JSC Radar Imagery