[ESIP-all] Looking for recent earth observations of the Tasman Sea

[Joe Hourcle]

I'm not much of one for observations pointed down from spacecraft.

Does anyone know of any near-real-time observations of sufficient spatial resolution to help?

(that they're actually allowed to talk about, of course)

-Joe


Begin forwarded message:

> From: Barbara Thompson <barbara.j.thompson at gmail.com>
> Date: August 8, 2013 6:26:43 PM EDT
> To: Joe Hourclé <oneiros at annoying.org>
> Subject: Virtual data pointing in the other direction?
> 
> Joe,
> 
> My friend Ralph is leading a search and rescue effort for a ship that's
> been missing on the Tasman Sea.  They were last heard from June 4.  We're
> trying to get images from May 28 to the present (emphasis on the earlier
> part of that window) to see if we can get any clue of what's happened to
> them.  There are 7 people on board - one of the people on the Schooner SV
> Niña is Evi Nemeth, author of many famous Unix/Linux sysadmin manuals.  : (
> 
> Google granted us a free license to Google Earth Pro, but it still doesn't
> have images that are recent enough.  I wrote Google to see if they could
> give us more recent images, but I haven't heard back.  I'm kind of lost
> when it comes to Earth-pointed data, but then I realized I have a friend
> who is involved in Informatics for the American Geophysical Union.  : )
> 
> Any idea how to get high-res data?  The ship is 70 feet long, so the 1.5-m
> resolution stuff in google earth would be fine.  Until we get images,
> they're focusing on ocean current models + drift models for other abandoned
> ships to help the aerial searchers more clearly refine the expected
> location for the ship.
> 
> The ship was fairly well equipped for a 3-week cruise, so it's possible for
> them to survive with their supplies + fishing for several months.
> 
> Any advice is appreciated.  We're posting info on the efforts at:
> 
> http://evxx.com/
> 
> Anyhow, if you have any idea how to get high-resolution data over the
> Tasman Sea, I'd be very happy to hear it.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Barbara