The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is a 15-channel imaging instrument operating on NASA's Terra satellite. A joint project between the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, ASTER has been acquiring data for 15 years, since March 2000. The archive now contains over 3 million scenes. Researchers at Australia's CSIRO analyzed and mosaicked all of the data for the continent to produce 17 ASTER Geoscience Maps at 90 m resolution. These unique products are being used for mineral exploration, climatological studies, and environmental impacts. In 2017, similar geoscience maps will be created for the entire land surface of the Earth. They will be publicly available at no cost.

The intergovernmental Group on Earth Observation (GEO) has been established by the Resolution of the Third Earth Observation Summit in February of 2005, in response to calls for action from the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. GEO envisions “a future wherein decisions and actions for the benefit of humankind are informed by coordinated, comprehensive and sustained Earth Observations and information”. The GEO community is creating a Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) that will link Earth observation resources world-wide across multiple Societal Benefit Areas.

When lives are threatened or lost due to catastrophic disasters, and when massive financial impacts are experienced, international emergency response teams rapidly mobilize to provide urgently required support. Satellite observations of affected areas often provide essential insight into the magnitude and details of the impacts. The large cost and high complexity of developing and operating satellite flight and ground systems encourages international collaboration in acquiring imagery for such significant global events in order to speed delivery of critical information to help those affected, and optimize spectral, spatial, and temporal coverage of the areas of interest. The International Charter-Space and Major Disasters was established to enable such collaboration in sensor tasking during times of crisis and is often activated in response to calls for assistance from authorized users. Insight is provided from a U.S. perspective into sensor support for Charter activations and other disaster events through a description of the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER), which has been used to support emergency situations for over a decade through its expedited tasking and near real-time data delivery capabilities. Examples of successes achieved and challenges encountered in international collaboration to develop related systems and fulfill tasking requests suggest operational considerations for new missions as well as areas for future enhancements.

The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflectance Radiometer (ASTER) is a high spatial resolution imaging instrument, scheduled to be launched on NASA's Earth Observing System AM-1 satellite platform in 1988, ASTER acquires data in 14 bands, spanning the visible, near-infrared, short-wavelength infrared, and thermal infrared spectral regions, with spatial resolution varying from 15-90 m, depending on wavelength. In order to evaluate the authors ability to use ASTER data for geological mapping, they created a simulated 14-band ASTER data set for Cuprite, Nevada. The study site has sparse vegetation and exposes a wide range of unaltered and hydrothermally altered volcanic rocks. The wide range of wavelengths covered by ASTER allowed them to distinguish iron oxide minerals, clay-bearing minerals, sulfate minerals, ammonia minerals, siliceous rocks, and carbonates. Based on interpretation of the ASTER data, and in conjunction with laboratory and field spectral measurements, they produced an alteration map showing the distribution of argillized rocks, opalized rocks with alunite, silicified rocks, and areas dominated by kaolinite and buddingtonite. The map was as accurate as published maps made by traditional field methods. ASTER should be an improvement over existing satellite systems for geologic mapping.>