Flown onboard Terra (formerly called EOS AM-1).

Applications: land use/land cover (i.e., agriculture, forestry); environmental monitoring (i.e., floods, volcanic eruptions); climatology; geology.

14 spectral bands in the visible, near infrared, shortwave infrared, and thermal infrared portions of the spectrum; pixel size varies from 15 m to 90 m; revisit rate of 16 days.

Data sets collected: land surface temperature, emissivity, reflectance, and elevation data.

Data from ASTER will be collected upon request, rather than continuously collecting data. The instrument was provided by the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI).

More information: http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov

Data from ASTER are available from: http://redhook.gsfc.nasa.gov/~imswww/pub/imswelcome/plain.html

"This thermal infrared false color image of Mauna Loa volcano, Hawaii shows lava flows in different colors from each other, due to their relative ages. This helps us understand the eruptive history of a volcano, a critical factor in defining future eruption hazards and risk."

-- ASTER Instrument Team, ASTER Project (source: http://visibleearth.nasa.gov)