Launch Date | 18 December 1999 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, USA |
Equator Crossing | 10:30 AM (north to south) |
Orbit | 705 km altitude, sun synchronous |
Orbit Inclination | 98.3 degrees from the equator |
Orbit Period | 98.88 minutes |
Grounding Track Repeat Cycle | 16 days |
Resolution | 15 to 90 meters |
The ASTER instrument consists of three separate instrument subsystems:
VNIR (Visible Near Infrared), a backward looking telescope which is only used to acquire a stereo pair image
SWIR (ShortWave Infrared), a single fixed aspheric refracting telescope
TIR (Thermal Infrared)
ASTER high-resolution sensor is capable of producing stereoscopic (three-dimensional) images and detailed terrain height models. Other key features of ASTER are:
- Multispectral thermal infrared data of high spatial resolution
- Highest spatial resolution surface spectral reflectance, temperature, and emissivity data within the Terra instrument suite
- Capability to schedule on-demand data acquisition requests
ASTER has 14 bands of information. For more information, please see the following table:
Instrument | VNIR | SWIR | TIR |
Bands | 1-3 | 4-9 | 10-14 |
Spatial Resolution | 15m | 30m | 90m |
Swath Width | 60km | 60km | 60km |
Cross Track Pointing | ± 318km (± 24 deg) | ± 116km (± 8.55 deg) | ± 116km (± 8.55 deg) |
Quantisation (bits) | 8 | 8 | 12 |