Space Shuttle Mission Report Series: Earth Observations during STS-055 April 26 - May 6, 1993

(continued)

Two Views of New Delhi

India is expected to have 1 billion inhabitants by the year 2000 with the population of Delhi growing to be near 15 million. New Delhi, India's burgeoning capital and the hub of northern India, is built with 15 district centers, each designed to be capable of supporting between 300,000 and 500,000 people. Delhi became British India’s capital in 1912 and is India's third largest city, after Calcutta and Bombay.      Figure 11 is a clear view of the city of New Delhi taken in 1993 before the monsoon rains began. North is to the top of the photo and the Yamuna River can be seen on the right (east) side of the city. Roads and railway lines emanate like spokes from the hub, near the Delhi Railway Station. Between two of these spokes, the old city of Delhi can be seen in the upper left central part of the image. South of this is a green area, the grounds of the President's estate and of the Secretariat. Further to the south are the runways of Palam International Airport.      Despite having India's highest per capita income, about 40% of the people of New Delhi cannot afford even government-subsidized housing. Some of the highest population densities on Earth occur in India, but the Green [agricultural] Revolution has enabled India to feed its people. Huge irrigation programs and new varieties have raised wheat and rice production to all-time records in India. However, these gains have not been realized for other staple crops, such as lentils, beans, and other legumes, which are critical for India's vegetarian population.      Figure 12 shows Palam International Airport of New Delhi, India. The 4.5-m resolution of this image can be compared with the 24-m resolution of the photograph taken with a hand-held camera which is shown in figure 11. This airport image was made with the MOMS instrument which accompanied the German payload Spacelab D-2.      Figure 11: New Delhi, India, as Seen in an Astronaut Photograph This clear view of the city of New Delhi was taken before the monsoon rains began, covering the city with clouds. North is to the top of the photo and the Yamuna River can be seen on the right (east) side of the city. [NASA photograph STS055-76-020] Moderate resolution (150 dpi, 350 Kb) High resolution (300 dpi, 4.3 Mb)

Figure 12: Palam International Airport of New Delhi, India, as Imaged by MOMS. Several aircraft can be seen clearly in this image from May 3, 1993, and may even be distinguished into different types. MOMS-02 Mode 1 Orbit 41 - Scene 11, channel 5 (panchromatic). Image processing by DLR. Pixel size 4.5 m x 4.5 m. Moderate resolutution (150 dpi, 136 Kb) High resolution (300 dpi, 1.6 Mb)

D-2/MOMS

The Earth observations payload MOMS (Modular Optoelectronic Multispectral Stereo-Scanner) carried on STS-55 was a modified and improved version of the instrument carried on the earlier flights STS-7 in 1983 and STS-41B in 1984. The system on the D-2 MOMS-02 was a pushbroom scanner, three-element, linear CCD array, which was sensitive in the visible and near-infrared spectrum, between 0.435 and 0.810 micrometers. Having the three elements enabled the instrument to be used as a three-channel along-track stereo system or a four-channel multispectral unit. Resolution achieved was 4.5 m in the panchromatic mode and 13.5 m in multispectral mode. Image strips are 37.6 km wide for the high-resolution mode and 78.1 km wide for the inclined stereo cameras. The multispectral channels are 0.440–0.505, 0.530–0.575, 0.645–0.680, and 0.770–0.810 micrometers (Ackermann et al. 1991). MOMS acquired 1348 images of the Earth. Of these, 246 are full stereo nadir-looking images, 340 are stereo tilted 30 degrees uptrack, 406 are multispectral, 176 are combination of fore and aft stereo in two spectral bands, and 180 are multispectral high-resolution images.      The Earth Observations Laboratory at NASA's Johnson Space Center supported the MOMS payload with real-time information on target characteristics obtained from analysis of images from geosynchronous and polar-orbiting environmental satellites (MOMS-02-D2 Data Catalogue 1994). This substantially improved the MOMS experiment by increasing the number of cloud-free images acquired over targets selected 12 or more hours prior to acquisition. The European MeteoSat 3 environmental satellite was used for North and South America; MeteoSat 4, for Africa; the Japanese GMS, for Asia and Australia; the American GOES, for Central America; and the American NOAA-AVHRR, for India.      Prices for hardcopy MOMS images range from 31 DM to 45 DM, depending on the product. Likewise digital files on Exabyte 8-mm tapes range from 250 DM to 350 DM. A data catalog is available and data may be ordered from:      DLR/DFD Data Management      Münchener Str. 20      D-82234 Wessling      GERMANY      Information about MOMS-02 data is also available from International Science Information Systems.      Thus, the cooperation between the Office of Earth Sciences at the Johnson Space Center and the MOMS investigators in Germany enabled the astronauts onboard the Space Shuttle Columbia to obtain a greater number of uncloudy MOMS images and those images, with their greater resolution, added detail to the contextual photographs taken on the same mission.

References

Ackermann, F.; E. Dorrer; H. Ebner; G Konecny; J. Bodechtel; H. Kaufmann; B. Koch; W. Kruck; and F. Lanzi, 1991, MOMS-02/D-2: A Multispectral Stereo Imager for the German Spacelab Mission D-2, Research Program of the German Spacelab Mission D-2 (Wissenschaftliche Projektführung), Köln, Germany, pp. 491–495. MOMS-02-D2 Data Catalogue, 1994, DARA (German Space Agency), July. Pitts, David E., et al., 1992, Earth Observations During Space Shuttle Mission STS-45: Mission to Planet Earth, Geocarto International 7 (4): 69–80. Shinn, Gene, et al., 1989, Journal of Sedimentary Petrology 59:147–161.

Notes

1)  The print-published version of this report originally appeared as Earth Observations During Space Shuttle Mission STS-55: Coluimbia's Mission to Planet Earth in Geocarto International, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 67-79. We thank the publisher for use of some of the published material for this internet edition. 2)  NASA Form 548 is on file at the Office of Earth Sciences.

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