IMPORTANT: SeaWiFS and HICO updates

[genecarlfeldman]

Good Afternoon,
Below are two very significant updates that we wanted to bring to everyone's attention.
With my very best regards,
gene

1) SeaWiFS Update:
Following up on our recent announcement ( http://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/forum/o ... l?tid=5080 ) regarding the agreement that was reached between NASA and DigitalGlobe regarding SeaWiFS, we are pleased to announce that it is no longer required to submit an application to access SeaWiFS data that is less than five years old and that as of today and ALL SeaWiFS (OrbView-2) data that were collected during the mission (September 1997-December 2010) in GAC, LAC or HRPT format is now in the public domain. We have updated the OceanColor website accordingly. I am also very happy to report that we are making great progress in recovering much additional SeaWiFS HRPT data, especially covering the 2005-2010 period and have already added over 20,000 brand new files to the archive over the past week. We are in discussion with many additional ground stations around the world who are actively working on making their holdings available to NASA and as a result, the international research community, and we will be reporting progress on this effort as significant milestones are reached. Thanks to everyone who are helping in the effort. The attached image shows the regions of additional geographic coverage that we have received over the past week for the years 2005, 2006 and 2007. The darker gray shaded areas shows the data that were already in the NASA archive while the lighter regions (the southern Indian Ocean and the western Pacific for example) show the recently acquired data and the newly covered regions.

2) HICO - Hyperspectral Imager for the Coastal Ocean Data availability:

We have been working with the folks at Washington's Naval Research Laboratory's Coastal and Ocean Remote Sensing Branch on the process of providing access to all the publicly available data collected by HICO (Hyperspectral Imager for the Coastal Ocean) which has been flying on board the International Space Station since 2009. We are happy to report that the data are now beginning to become available for distribution starting with data collected in 2013. We expect that the historical data (2009 - 2012) to be processed and made available within the next few weeks. Examples of how one can search, browse and download HICO data from the OceanColor Web's multi-mission browser ( http://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi/browse.pl?sen=hi ) are attached. By making the data available via this common interface, cross-mission searches are possible for all the ocean color data sets that we support. The example provided in the attached images shows how easy it is to search and download all coincident HICO and MODIS/AQUA scenes over Florida that were acquired during the week of 17-24 January 2013.

Under the terms of the agreement reached between NASA, the Office of Naval Research and the Naval Research Laboratory, access to the HICO data will require simple registration with the EOSDIS User Registration Services (URS). Prospective users need to obtain an account with URS before they will be able to download HICO data from the OceanColor Web:

https://earthdata.nasa.gov/urs/register

This is an automatic registration and no human intervention is required to assign a username. A link to the URS registration is available on the OceanColor web site ( http://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/SUPPORT/register.html )

SeaDAS has been modified to support HICO data but this time, the current Level-2 processing code does not support the full hyper-spectral resolution of the HICO data set. Until we have made the necessary modifications to support hyper-spectral data, when given a HICO L1B input file, the Level-2 processing code will produce a multi-spectral output. Currently, the HICO data are treated as a 15-band multi-spectral instrument with a band set based on that of the MERIS instrument. However, extensive radiative transfer simulations have already been carried-out to produce the HICO-specific hyperspectral aerosol and Rayleigh tables needed for atmospheric correction which will be required for subsequent full hyper-spectral processing to Level-2. We believe that the steps that we have taken will enable the much broader ocean color research community to use a familiar tool (SeaDAS) for generation, display, and analysis of ocean color products from HICO.

Below is a link to a story released today on NASA's webpage along with the corresponding Press Release:

“Sensing” a Change to Open Operations for Space Station’s HICO Instrument:

http://www.nasa.gov/content/sensing-a-c ... d7ISoUpfSw
July 11, 2013
RELEASE 13-216
Space Station Ocean Imager Available to More Scientists

HOUSTON -- The International Space Station is expanding the use of its Hyperspectral Imager for the Coastal Ocean (HICO) instrument to more Earth scientists and environmental researchers.

HICO records highly detailed images of various environments on Earth for research, support and management. Now that the instrument has completed its primary mission of collecting regional coastal ocean data for civilian and naval research, NASA will continue to support HICO and encourage new users. HICO is mounted to the station's Japanese Experiment Module Exposed Facility.

Scientists can use information from HICO to detail the biological and chemical signatures of aquatic and terrestrial materials. When the instrument scans an area of Earth, its sensor can reveal things invisible to the human eye such as chemical compounds in coastal waters or the presence of microscopic sea life. The Environmental Protection Agency has tapped HICO as a resource to monitor coastal water quality.

New proposals for scientific or commercial use of HICO's data should be submitted through the HICO website. Proposals requesting new uses of the instrument will be evaluated by the International Space Station Program, NASA's Science Mission Directorate, the HICO project scientist and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space. Oregon State University in Corvallis manages the HICO website, and the Naval Research Laboratory operates the sensor itself.

Users can access historical and any future collections of HICO data through the NASA Ocean Color website, managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

To submit a proposal to use HICO, visit: http://hico.coas.oregonstate.edu/index.shtml

To view the Ocean Color website, visit: http://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/

For more about the International Space Station or information on past, ongoing, and future station research activities, including research results and publications, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/station



Joshua Buck
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
jbuck@nasa.gov

Jenny Knotts
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
norma.j.knotts@nasa.gov