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    NPOESS Aircraft Sounder Testbed

    Project Description

    The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Aircraft Sounder Testbed- Microwave Temperature Sounder (NAST-MTS) is very much as the name suggests; an aircraft mounted Microwave Temperature Sounder. The instrument, built by Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Research Laboratory of Electonics (RLE), is about the size of a footlocker, and is mounted inside the forward section of one of the wing mounted 'superpods' of the NASA ER-2 aircraft, shown below.

    The objectives of NAST are to:

    • simulate candidate instruments for NPOESS: CrIS, ATMS
    • evaluate key Environmental Data Records (EDRs) algorithms
    • preview high-resolution products—spectral and spatial
    • provide flight validation

    Instruments included in the NAST project are:

    • NAST-I, IR Interferometer Sounder
    • NAST-M, Microwave Sounder

    image: NASA ER-2 high altitude plane
    NASA ER-2 aircraft

    Links to addition information about NAST

    http://ghrc.msfc.nasa.gov/uso/readme/nast-mts.html
    http://spigot.ssec.wisc.edu/~nasti/NASTI/

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    Last revised: 04/04/2003    

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