Within the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is a division called the Solid Earth Science Working Group. Since the Earth is made up of a liquid core that is filled with molten magma and a solid crust that has tectonic plates, thinner and thicker areas and some holes, it makes sense that magma will work its way to and above the surface of the crust.
Along with floods, earthquakes, landslides volcanic eruptions and other disruptions of the land, the SESWG has a mission to monitor, study and to gather information that will tell scientists and the public more about the restless planetary surface that is our home.
Since it’s inception in 2000, the SESWG has had some very, very high technology tools as well as collobarations with the top scientific agencies, universities and organizations as its arsenal to develop both short term and long term goals and strategies for understanding the solid parts of Earth and for improving our abilities to make predictions based on observations and data that is collected and analyzed.
The components of the SESWG programs include:
Observing surface deformations:
This is done by looking at the displacements of the Earth’s crust. Rapid deformations and displacements include volcanic magma pressurization and eruptions, earthquakes, glacial activity and devastating natural events, such as floods and landslides.
The tool for this is the dedicated InSAR satellite. This satellite uses L-Band operation and high level topography, left and right looking and a time schedule of covering the entire surface in 100 kilometer wide sections or swaths each week. The medium term goal is to decrease the frequency of coverage to almost daily and to extend the swath coverage to hundreds of kilometers. Spatial resolution would also be improved to 1 meter. Long term goals include hourly update and access to sea floors with greatly increased image density.
Another tool for volcanic observation is through Imaging Spectroscopy, or Hypospectral Imaging. This imaging system uses spectra that range from visible to near infrared to capture the complexity of different materials, different temperatures of the materials and to catch rapid deformations and movements of the crust. AVRIS and ASTER.
AVRIS goes aboard NASA’s ER2 and three other aircraft platforms. This imaging system focuses on particle scattering and molecular absorption to monitor both surface and atmosphere.
ASTER is aboard the TERRA Satellites. It is the Advanced Space-borne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, and it is operated in conjunction with Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and industry.
NASA uses three global geodetic networks in cooperation with many nations to provide precise 3-D data and other services to researchers across the globe. The three systems are split live range (SLR), very long baseline interferometry, (VLBI) and the ground GPS system.
In addition, there are modeling, data transfer, data processing systems and computational systems to support working with the massive amounts of data that are involved in monitoring volcanoes.
NASA Observational Strategies SESWG Home Page
AVRIS
InSAR
ASTER
