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“I had gotten a MODIS image from a researcher,”
Stone recalls. He had been impressed with the quality and detail of the photo-like images. Compared to
some kinds of
satellite images, says Stone, “True color seems more like you’re looking at a photo. You can
identify
features easily.” While being able to identify features easily made the images easy to use,
timeliness was
also essential. If he were going to use satellite imagery to direct the supply ships to McMurdo, Stone
needed the
images immediately after they were acquired, not days later.
The MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center was ideally set up to give Stone the
images he
needed. Developed in 2000 to monitor wildfires across the world, the MODIS Rapid Response System posts
all MODIS
images of land on the Internet within hours of when MODIS acquires them. The images are free and
accessible to
anyone who has an Internet connection. |
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Stone’s request for imagery came at a fortuitous time. The
Rapid
Response Team had recently started to produce daily images of selected regions that were compatible with
Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping programs so that other information—like a shipping
route—could
be placed on top of the images. By contrast, the near-real-time global imagery the team had been
distributing up until that point was not processed to the level that it could be used as the basis for a
map.
“When the request came in, we thought this was a typical application we should help with,”
says
Jacques Descloitres, program manager of the MODIS Rapid Response System. The team started generating
daily
images of the Ross Sea.
Stone was delighted. “We had never had a full view of McMurdo Sound before,” he says. “Then
someone set up this site that was capturing our part of the world that everyone could look at for free,
and
it was updated on a daily basis.” The site quickly became the first thing Stone looked at every
morning.
Mapping with MODIS Battle with Bergs
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MODIS acquires images of Antarctica on a daily basis. This MODIS
image shows the McMurdo shipping channel along with other features of the icy continent. The turning
basin
is a wide arc cut into the surrounding ice so that icebreakers and other ships can turn around. (Photos
courtesy MODIS
Rapid Response) |