The Planetary Society Weblog
By Emily Lakdawalla
Borup Fiord Pass Field Report: Bad luck for first attempt at satellite imaging
Jul. 1, 2006 | 13:09 PDT | 20:09 UTC
I got an email from Bob Pappalardo letting me know that the first attempt to acquire multispectral imagery from the USGS EO-1 satellite across Borup Fiord Pass, which took place on June 26, was clouded out. This of course we knew from Damhnait Gleeson's reports from the field. But according to her report two days ago, the weather had improved. The satellite will be shooting an image again today; hopefully they'll have better luck!
This image was taken by the Landsat satellite on a much clearer day several years ago -- I include it here just to show you what they were hoping to see, and approximately where the EO-1 Hyperion image swath should have fallen. Footprints of Hyperion multispectral images across Borup Fiord PassThis Landsat satellite image covers the area of Borup Fiord Pass (north-south valley just to the left of center in this image). The colored rectangles on top show the areas of EO-1 Hyperion multispectral image swaths. Each swath is 7 kilometers wide. Credit: Landsat-7 image, courtesy of Bob Pappalardo |
And here is a thumbnail of the actual swath they got back from the satellite. EO-1 will re-try the imaging at least once if there's more than 25% cloud cover; I'll say there's a wee bit more than 25% cloud cover in this picture!EO-1 Hyperion swath across Borup Fiord PassThe USGS EO-1 satellite acquired a swath of multispectral image data across Borup Fiord Pass on June 26, 2006, at the same time that a field expedition led by Stephen Grasby was examining sulfur springs in the area. Unfortunately, it was a very cloudy day. Credit: USGS |
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