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Clouds over Flores Island, Indonesia

MODIS; aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite flew over Indonesia and captured this true-color image of spectacular clouds rising over the landscape.

Tropical Cyclone Alessia (02S) over Australia

The first storm of the Australian region's cyclone season threatened Australia’s Top End in late November 2013.

Plume from Sakura-jima, southern Japan

On November 23, 2013 violent eruptions shook Japan’s Sakura-jima volcano.

Tropical Storm Issac

In late August 2012, Tropical Storm Isaac hovered over the Caribbean Sea, taking aim at populated areas. At 2:00 p.m. EDT on August 23, shortly after MODIS took this picture, the U.S.

Fires and smoke in western United States

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this true-color image of the fires on August 13, 2012.

Latest News

The commanded pitch of the Aqua spacecraft to allow for a deep space calibration including the Moon was completed on September 24, 2021. The MODIS instrument successfully viewed the moon through its earth view (EV) port. MCST monitored the instrument health throughout the maneuver and continues to monitor telemetry. Analysis of the calibration is ongoing.

Terra flight operations successfully reset the spacecraft solid state recorder (SSR) on September 22, 2021. Among other benefits, this reset returns the Terra MODIS onboard data storage to its full capacity. For more information see the article on the NASA EOS Terra website here.

MCST is preparing for an Aqua lunar deep space calibration (LDSC) on 2021/266 (September 23, 2021). This spacecraft pitch maneuver will allow MODIS to view the Moon through the EV port. In order to facilitate this maneuver, there will be outages of science data in the approximate range of 0900-11:00z. The maneuver will also affect the temperature of the MODIS cold focal planes, which may take ~20 hours to stabilize post-maneuver.

MCST is preparing for a Terra flight operations activity designed to reset the spacecraft solid state recorder (SSR). If successful, this will recover the lost on-orbit data storage for MODIS and the other instruments. The reset will require science data recording to be suspended for most of day 2021/265 (September 22, 2021) and potentially into the following day.

On June 29, 2021, at 12:20:45z, printed wire assembly (PWA) #47 of the Terra spacecraft buffer failed. This PWA was allocated to the MODIS instrument.  Because of this failure, the onboard data storage for MODIS science data has been reduced. On July 2nd, MODIS IOT performed tests on reducing the Terra MODIS data rate to accommodate this change. Starting July 3 at 20:00:00z, the tests were completed, and the data rate continued at the pre-PWA failure schedule, which began on May 2, 2021.

MODIS Characterization Support Team

The MODIS Characterization Support Team (MCST) is dedicated to the production of a high quality MODIS calibration product. This product is a precursor to every geophysical science product. MCST works for the Science Team Leader and is responsible for developing and maintaining the calibration product (L1B algorithm).

Tags: Calibration

Calibration

Collection 6 has been under development for a number of years. MCST, in consultation with representatives of the science disciplines, developed improvements to the calibration algorithms and methodolgies to handle known issues with the aging MODIS sensors. Summary talks of the proposed Collection 6 changes have been delivered at the MODIS science team meetings over the last few years.

L1B

Current L1B LUT Versions:

Terra C6: 6.1.26.85; Terra C6.1: 6.2.2.97; Aqua C6: 6.1.37.88; Aqua C6.1: 6.2.3.21

Tags: L1B Product

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