The 15th Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) Science Team Meeting

The 15th ASTER Science Team Meeting was held June 23-25, 1998, at the Tokyo International Forum in Yurakucho, Tokyo, Japan. There were approximately 90 participants representing the ASTER Science Team, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) ASTER Science Project, Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Earth Remote Sensing Data Analysis Center (ERSDAC), Japan Resources Observation Systems Organization (JAROS), the ASTER Ground Data System (GDS) Project, the instrument vendors, and the Japanese algorithm development contractors. The three-day meeting was composed of a plenary session on June 24 and several individual Working Group meetings from June 23 to 25.

Plenary Session

Wednesday Afternoon, June 24

H. Tsu (Geological Survey of Japan [GSJ]), the ASTER Science Team Leader, welcomed the participants and opened the Plenary Session.

Y. Yamaguchi (Nagoya University) reported on recent Science Team activities and status. These included:

• The EOS AM-1 launch is postponed. The new launch date is still TBD.
• ASTER Instrument functionality and performance were confirmed by the Thermal Vacuum Tests at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space (LMMS) in Valley Forge.

J. Cymerman (LMASD) reported on the EOS AM-1 Spacecraft status. He said that:

• Test performance (thermal vacuum test, functional test, etc.) of the spacecraft will be completed in early September.
• Spacecraft Readiness
  • Spacecraft will be ready for shipment preparation in mid-September.
  • Shipment preparation (approximately 3 weeks)
  • Launch operations (approximately 12 weeks)
  • Official launch date pending GSFC decisions

M. Kudoh (JAROS) reported on the ASTER and Spacecraft Status. The main topics were as follows.

• The postponement of the EOS AM-1 launch was reported to the SAC (Space Activities Committee; Japan Space Top Policy Management Organization) by Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) on June 3, 1998.

• Recent S/C major activities (thermal vacuum test, thermal balance test, spacecrafts comprehensive test etc.) from February 1 to end of July, 1998
• Effects of launch delay on ASTER
  • Though JAROS/ASTER sensor committee specified some marginal requirements for launch delay (one year or so) in the ASTER developmental specifications from the beginning, strict storage conditions should be maintained and specified.
  • For more than a one-year delay, ASTER needs to check detailed items on reliability for each subsystem, especially for the cryocooler systems.
  • Frequent operations in the clean room are preferable for the ASTER instrument

A. Unger (GSFC) reported on the launch and EOSDIS Core System (ECS) status. He said that:

• Development schedule of Flight Operation Segment and launch date will be decided and announced by GSFC around the middle of July.

• Flight Operations Segment (FOS) completion date and EOS AM-1 launch date are dependent on stabilizing system and exhaustive testing to discover and correct all remaining problems.

• EOS Data and Operations System (EDOS) acceptance testing will be completed in late June.

• Science Information System:
  • Level-1 Production Rule patch released to DAACs on May 14, as scheduled.
  • Supported successful Landsat-7 system test (I&T4c.3) at EROS Data Center (EDC).
  • Completed initial multi-user system stability testing.

H. Watanabe (ERSDAC) presented the current status of ASTER GDS. He reported on the major milestones of U.S.-Japan meetings during FY 1995 and 1997 and talked about the schedule of prelaunch activities. He also presented the status of Level-1A & 1B generation and Data Processing Requests (DPRs) & auto-processing of Level-1B generation by GDS.

A. Maruyama (ERSDAC) also presented a status report on the CMS (Customer Management System).

Activity/Summary Reports

• a joint pre-launch mission preparation plan;

• IST development and schedule;

• scheduler development;

• ASTER Mission Simulator (AMS) development;

• Mission Analysis Tool (MAT) development; and

• xAR development plan.

He also reviewed the SSSG (Science Scheduling Support Group) technical meeting. M. Pniel reported on the action items of the OMPWG ad hoc meeting.

T. Kawakami reported on the 11th GDS/EOSDIS I/F meeting that was held June 8-11,1998 at the EDC DAAC in Sioux Falls including the plan for ASTER science operations for ASTER Level-1 processing during the ICO (Initial Check-Out) period. Other discussion topics included:

• Japan and U.S. science teams jointly defined the data acquisition requirements for the ICO period, which include approximately 210 target sites.

• Data acquisition between L+1 and L+40 will be based on requests collected by the Instrument Team, JAROS, and (between L+41 and L+105) by the Science Team.

• Comparison between GDS products and Science Products: Science Team is responsible for data validation.

Y. Yamaguchi reported on the Science Team Acquisition Request (STAR) Review Committee meeting held June 23. The summary of this meeting is as follows:

A draft STAR Guideline document, prepared by H. Sekine, was reviewed by the Committee members. This document defines STAR types, proposal guidelines, parameters, and so on.

The Committee decided that, with the exception of two special cases, up to 400,000 km² of each STAR proposal may be classified as high priority, and the rest must be low priority. The special cases are the Global Land and Ice Monitoring From Space (GLIMS) Glacial Monitoring STAR and the AST/IDS Volcano Monitoring STAR, which are allowed to have up to 400,000 km² classified as high priority and the remainder must be medium priority. Local STARs are limited to only a few specified purposes such as instrument calibration and emergency observations, and will be 1-2 scenes with very high priority. The ICO STARs were finalized with a few minor changes. Concerning the at-launch post-ICO STARs, the STAR proposals and parameters will be reviewed and revised by STAR submitters in order to meet the new guidelines by September 1998. New post-ICO STAR proposals can be submitted any time.

H. Sekine (Mitsubishi Research Institute) presented the STAR collection status. The main topics included:

• Status of Japanese STARs
  • Japanese ICO STAR parameter files were almost all collected from each WG (121 STAR targets)

  • 30 post-ICO STAR proposals with 2504 STARs were accepted by the Japanese STAR Committee
  • All ICO & post-ICO STARs have been sent back to each WG to review the targets and parameters (due date is the end of July).

• Launch slip impact on:
  • STAR Target
  • STAR Parameters

• STAR Collection Schedule (Japan)
  • Collect revised ICO & Post-ICO STAR parameter files from each WG by the end of July 1998
  • Collect revised ICO & Post-ICO STAR proposals by the end of July 1998
  • Evaluate/approve new STAR proposals by September 1998 (TBD)

R. Molloy (JPL) presented the U.S. STAR Collection status.

• All approved ICO STARs were transferred to H. Sekine as of June 18, 1998
  • 166 STARs consistent with summer Northern Hemisphere ICO phase
  • ICO STAR list "tweak" expected as result of STAR Committee analysis

I. Sato (Chair of Higher Level Data Product WG, GSJ) reported on the status of the ASTER User's Guide. Topics were as follows:

• Progress after the last Science Team meeting
  • Update HTML version documents
  • Make the updated version available at the ASTER Science Server (ERSDAC)

• Current work and future plans
  • Prepare to release PDF version

• Schedule
  • Parts of General and Level-1 data product of this Guide will be prepared by the end of March 1999.

K. Arai (Saga University) and K. Thome (U. of Arizona) reported on the results of the field campaign in Tsukuba, December 1997, and in Nevada, June 1998.

Issues for Discussions:

Y. Yamaguchi asked each working group to discuss the following issues:

• Launch Slip Effect
  • Each WG is requested to discuss the launch slip effect
  • Parameter change of the already submitted STARs; due the end of July 1998

• Algorithm Validation Plan in both ICO and after ICO phases
  • Let us take advantage of the launch slip to consolidate the validation plans

• STAR Collection
  • STAR guideline is being prepared by OMPWG by September 1998

• Outreach Plan
  • ASTER AO has been issued from the Japanese side
  • ASTER websites in the U.S. and Japan have been opened
  • What do we need to do in addition to these?

• Research Activities
  • We look forward to obtaining the real ASTER data.

The next ASTER Science Team meeting will be held January 1999, in Pasadena, California.

Summary Report of each Working Group

The Ecosystems Working Group meeting, Chairs H. Kayanne (University of Tokyo) and T. Schmugge (USDA Hydrology Lab), was held on Tuesday, June 23, 1998 in Tokyo. The agenda for the meeting was brief with only three presentations.

• H. Kayanne started with a brief presentation on the status of the special product algorithms being developed by the Japanese team: wetland, agricultural land, aridland, coral reefs and forest. At present, most of the test sites are situated in Japan. Japan Ecosystems WG intends to expand monitoring sites by ASTER with many targets in Asia.

• T. Schmugge gave a presentation describing the TIMS data acquired during the summer of 1997 over the Southern Great Plains experiment (SGP-97) site in Oklahoma and the JORNEX experiment site in New Mexico. The TIMS data acquired are of good quality and should be adequate for estimating surface fluxes. The spatial scales of a portion of the data acquired over the SGP-97 site were studied using wavelet techniques with interesting results. A ground based TIR radiometer recently acquired by the Hydrology Lab with ASTER TIR bands was described. An approach for using remotely sensed surface temperatures to estimate surface fluxes was presented. M. Ramsey of Arizona State University described the planned use of ASTER data at the Phoenix urban LTER site.

• These presentations were followed by a discussion of the proposed STAR sites from this working group. It was concluded that more collaboration between H. Kayanne and T. Schmugge was needed.

A Geology Working Group meeting, Chairs M. Urai and L. Rowan (USGS), was held on June 23. We discussed Higher Level Products and STAR status. M. Ramsey presented 'Aleutian/Kamchatcan volcanic hazards studies'. M. Jinguuji (NIRE) presented 'Quantitative estimation of erupted volcanic ash by using satellite data'. Y. Yamaguchi and C. Naito (Nagoya University) presented 'Spectral indices for lithologic discrimination using the ASTER SWIR data'. S. Hook (JPL) reported on the MASTER status and B. Raup (USGS) reported on GLIMS progress. We found some redundancies in the Volcano STAR. A new Action Item was assigned to D. Pieri (JPL) and M. Urai (GSJ) to eliminate the redundancies from Volcano STAR.

The Temperature-Emissivity Separation (TES) Working Group meeting, Chair S. Rokugawa, was held on June 23. Both Japanese and U.S. TES code status were reported, and the TES code update scenario was then discussed for the initial checkout phase. The results of field campaigns in Tsukuba '97 and in Railroad Valley '98 were also reported by the participants. Finally the current status and future flight plan of MASTER (MODIS and ASTER simulator) were presented.

The Level-1/Geometric Working Group meeting, Chairs H. Fujisada (Science University of Tokyo) and G. Geller (JPL), was held on June 24. The topics addressed included:

• Level-1 related operation overview during initial checkout period;

• Level-1 algorithm update;

• Japan's geometric validation plan update;

• U.S. geometric validation plan update; and

• development status of geometric validation tools.

The OMPWG (Operation and Mission Planning Working Group), Chairs Y. Yamaguchi and M. Pniel (JPL), met on June 25. The summary of this meeting is as follows.

T. Kawakami (ERSDAC) showed the ASTER AO status update. AO is open to anyone at http://astweb.ersdac. or.jp/ao/. H. Sekine (Mitsubishi Research Institute) and R. Molloy (JPL) discussed xAR collection status and transfer strategy to ASTER Ground Data System (GDS). Updates of the operation and mission planning tool development were reported: ASTER Instrument Support Terminal (IST) by T. Narita (Japex Geoscience Institute: JGI), the scheduler by T. Ohno (JGI), ASTER Mission Simulator (AMS) by R. Cohen (JPL), and Mission Analysis Tool (MAT) by H. Muraoka (Dowa Engineering). R. Molloy reported the discussion results by the Science Scheduling Support Group (SSSG) on the previous day. The issues include the new schedule of the Operation Procedure Document (OPD) development, software fix for the scheduler, user category format for AMS input, and so on. N. Doi (ERSDAC) presented the SSSG training plan and D. Wenkert (JPL) updated the status of Mission Guidelines for ASTER Operations.

The Atmospheric Correction Working Group meeting, Chairs T. Takashima (EORC) and F. Palluconi (JPL), was held on June 25. The topics were as follows:

• Present status of IR algorithm
  • The algorithm was delivered in April 1998

• Present status of VIS algorithm (U.S. and Japan)
  • Junge-based look-up table is completed and is comparable with MISR's (U.S.).
  • Adjacency effect algorithm (Ver. 1) is almost ready (perhaps end of August 1998) (Japan)

• Field campaign at Tsukuba and Railroad Valley

• Cloud masking

• Polar-cloud masking and contrails on at least 130 validation sites in the world demonstrated by AVHRR (R. Welch, University of Alabama)

• Publication
  • K. Thome (U. of Arizona), 1998: Atmospheric Correction of ASTER, IEEE TGARS, 36, 1199-1211.

The Radiometric Calibration Working Group (CAL WG) meeting, Chair K. Arai (Saga University), was held on June 25. The summary of the meeting is as follows:

One of the major concerns for us is the radiometric calibration coefficient determination method with three types of different sources, onboard calibration lamps and blackbody, vicarious calibration, and cross calibration. K. Arai proposed his algorithm as a current baseline for that. Although we could not reach a conclusion, a careful trend analysis for the aforementioned three different sources during the initial checkout period as well as the prelaunch calibration phase is highly recommended.

The vendors for VNIR and SWIR presented the test results acquired at Valley Forge during the T/V test, in particular, onboard calibration lamps.

There will be an additional test with an external lamp for SWIR.

A careful analysis will be made for calibration output for VNIR.

K. Thome briefly reported the activities at the previous field campaign in Railroad Playa, Nevada in June 1998. We made a successful observation with Landsat, SPOT, SeaWiFS, and NOAA as well as aircraft-based MODIS/ASTER Simulator, MODIS Airborne Simulator (MAS) flights. Also, we discussed the next field campaign plan for the Pasadena area in January 1999 in conjunction with the next ASTER Science Team meeting.