Other possible imagery: Multispectral, Hyperspectral, Astronauts acquired
Folks,
This is a request for help to the remote sensing community and this is a long shot. I have been talking to some people over the past week about using some lower spatial resolution imagery with higher spectral resolution to see if we could somehow find Jim’s boat. While hyperspectral imagery seems available for a restricted set of conditions (too small of a swath for EO-1), there is multispectral imagery available with resolution between 30 meters to 260 meters.
* 30 meter resolution: In the EROS database of the USGS, there are multispectral views of the scene of interest at about the time that is interesting to our current search. While the resolution is not great (30 m Landsat 7 with ETM+), it seems one can still see boats, I summarized this finding here:
http://nuit-blanche.blogspot.com/2007/02/multispectral-should-be-in-mix.html
I would be expecting some data fusion process to happen eventually between the current set (ER-2, Radarsat, DG/Ikonos,…) and this new set. The other interesting side of this story would be to increase the search area to the whole coast of California.
However, I am not a remote sensing person, hence I do not have access to EROS imagery nor do I have access to processing capabilities at this time. Can somebody in the audience help ?
* The 260 meter resolution can be found on Envisat, a new european satellite:
and I found nine shots that could help our effort. The resolution is 260 meters but the resolution (S/N) is pretty high.
Again, does anybody know how to get a hold of this imagery for this effort fast, and can somebody process it ?
Finally, there is another possibility for taking a picture over the pacific ocean with a pixel resolution of about 30 meters per pixel: Astronauts Acquired Photographs taken from the International Space Station.
http://hasp-geocam.blogspot.com/2006/12/orders-of-magnitude-resolution.html
While we can get high resolution shots from Digital Globe, it may be worthwhile to have a much lower resolution but a larger field of view for certain areas especially if there is only one foreign object to detect. I am not quite sure about how to make a request for this type of imagery though.
February 9th, 2007 at 11:07 am
I work at NASA Ames and will try to check.
February 9th, 2007 at 11:32 am
For the multispectral data from Landsat 7, one of my concern is that EROS closes today at 4:00 pm CST.
With regards to the astronauts photos, one can either know somebody who works at CB or try to talk to one of them through Ham radio. The main difference between these photos over the satellite ones is the ability to take several shots of the same scene thereby enabling some type of superresolution of some kind.
Igor.
February 9th, 2007 at 11:34 am
For the europeans, everything is already closed for the week-end unless one knows somebody who works at the satellite downlink or some other.
Igor.
February 9th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
ISS Expedition 14 Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin “enjoys sailing in his free time”.
February 9th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Gabriel,
This is good. Anybody knows somebody at MCC or better MCC/Capcom ?
Igor.
February 9th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
I have contacted my friends at Bechtel to see if they could help with the Landsat imagery. When I worked there several years ago, we had a remote sensing lab and processed data from the EROS data center. If the lab is still active, I will get the people in touch with you.
Genevieve
February 9th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Thank you Genevieve.
Igor.
February 10th, 2007 at 6:03 am
The Landsat 7 imagery looks good–looks like it would be possible to identify JG’s boat as it left SF Bay and began it’s journey to the Farallon Islands on Sunday Jan 28. We know the point of origination (the marina in SF?) and we have the cell phone call at about 10:30am and last cell sync at about 11:30am Sun morning plus estimated speed and routing to plot an estimated track. This could be compared with Landsat 7 (and similar) imagery for Sun morning if that imagery is available for that time and location. Hopefully a match could be made, and that “hit” could then be tracked in that or other Landsat/Earth-Observing imagery as the presumed Tenacious made its way out to the Farallons. The boat could then be tracked on other imagery for later times and dates to help determine from the imagery where it is now or where it may have disappeared along the way. Either way, this would seem to offer hope of developing more precise search coordinates that may be actionable by the USCG.
February 10th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
I have put some results on my findings of coverage and timeline for landsat and envisat here:
http://nuit-blanche.blogspot.com/2007/02/finding-jim-gray-landsat-5-and-7.html
The big problem is really the clouds, they are there pretty much all the time and obstructing the view in many shots.
Igor.
February 11th, 2007 at 7:27 am
Thanks Igor. Very helpful.
The weather for Sun Jan 28 was reported as good, so I thought maybe there would not be obstructing clouds. In order to for that identification scheme (in my earlier post) to work, we would need unobstructed earth-observing imagery available for Jan 28 in the SF Bay-Farallon Islands geographic area. If a potential “hit” could be identified, then we could attempt to track that hit in subsequent imagery. That’s the theory. Sounds like your search has concluded that we do not have imagery available that meets those requirements.
What did you and others conclude about the potential for multispectral identification of hits (outside the visible spectrum)? What do boats look like in multispectral imagery (looking through cloud cover)?