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

Fri Aug 9 08:42:16 EDT 2013

Joe, 

I've heard that satellite radar images are useful for boat detection in the open ocean.   A special acquisition from one of the international radar satellites could be requested.  The Alaska Synthetic Apperature Radar (SAR) Facility (ASF) is the NASA data center that deals with this type of data.  See:  http://www.asf.alaska.edu/program/sdc

 -Robert

---
Robert E. Wolfe
NASA GSFC Code 619
B32/S036G, Greenbelt, MD 20771
p. 301-614-5508, cp. 301-257-6966

-----Original Message-----
From: esip-all-bounces at lists.esipfed.org [mailto:esip-all-bounces at lists.esipfed.org] On Behalf Of Goodman, Michael (MSFC-ZP11)
Sent: Thursday, August 08, 2013 10:20 PM
To: Joe Hourcle
Cc: esip-all at lists.esipfed.org
Subject: Re: [ESIP-all] Looking for recent earth observations of the Tasman Sea

Joe,

DigitalGlobe (www.digitalglobe.com) has the GeoEye-1 satellite. The satellite provides 41 cm panchromatic and 1.65 meter multispectral imagery in 15.2 km swaths. The spacecraft in a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 680 km (422 mi) with a 10:30a equator crossing time. I don't know anyone at DigitalGlobe but you can google/bing them to find a contact.  

NASA does not have any high resolution satellite imagery that could spot a boat.

--- Michael

Michael Goodman
256 961 7890 office
256 763 2071 NASA cell

On 8/8/13 8:59 PM, "Joe Hourcle" <oneiros at grace.nascom.nasa.gov> wrote:

>
>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
>
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