ASTER Satellite Sensor

ASTER Satellite Sensor (15m)

ASTER satellite sensor is one of the five state-of-the-art instrument sensor systems on-board the Terra satellite that was launched on December 18, 1999, at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, USA.

ASTER Satellite Sensor (15m)

(Image Copyright © NASA/Japanese Space Team)

ASTER is a 15-meter, 14 band multispectral resolution instrument. It can be used for land cover and change detection, calibration, validation, and land surface studies.

ASTER satellite image data is expected to contribute to a wide array of global change-related application areas, including vegetation and ecosystem dynamics, hazard monitoring, geology and soils, land surface climatology, hydrology, and the generation of digital elevation models (DEMs).

ASTER high-resolution satellite is capable of producing stereo imagery for creating detailed digital terrain models (DTMs).

Sample Images

ASTER Satellite Image Gallery

ASTER Satellite Sensor Specifications

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 has 14 bands of information. For more information, please see the following table:

ASTER Specifications - PDF Download

Satellites Currently Operated by NASA

LANDSAT 8 Satellite Sensor (15m-30m)

LANDSAT 7 ETM+ Satellite Sensor (15m-30m)