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WFF Instrumentation Sciences Home WelcomeWFF scientists support the Instrumentation Science Branch through our involvement with land-based radars, airborne lidar, atmospheric measurements, and UAV. WFF projects include:+ "Sensors With Wings" Small UAVs are showing promise for high resolution, quick response measurements for Earth science research. Several experiments have been conducted within the branch to explore the potential utility of miniaturized sensors combined with small air vehicles for a variety of measurements and missions. + Upper Air Instrumentation Research Project Providing and seeking refined, improved, more accurate atmospheric and meteorological measurement systems and data for both today and tomorrow's US Global Change Research Program and Earth Science Enterprise Program needs. Instrument Development Code 614.6 has developed a number of airborne remote sensing instruments including: topographic mapping LIDARs, topographic mapping RADARs, fluorescence LIDAR, passive optical sensors, precision aircraft steering/control, and general purpose aircraft data systems. The Scanning Radar Altimeter The SRA is a raster scanning airborne down-looking pulsed narrow-beam radar altimeter operating at 36 gHz and producing 10 rasters per second. The SRA is presently being used to remotely measure hurricane driven ocean directional wave spectra and hurricane storm surge. The SRA has collected data during the 1998 and 1999 hurricane seasons. The Rain-Sea Interaction Facility The goal of the Rain-Sea Interaction Facility is to improve measurements of rain, wind and air-sea gas exchange over the oceans. Global measurement of these processes contributes to improved weather prediction and climate modeling. + NASA's Polarized (NPOL) S-Band Radar The NASA Polarimetric Radar (NPOL), developed by a research team from Wallops Flight Facility, is fully a portable and self-contained S-band research radar. It has an ultra-modern flat panel hexagonal antenna 18 feet (5.5 meters) in diameter. The radar requires no special site preperation and can be set up on a generally flat area anywhere in the world. The system can operate continuously, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, measuring both rainfall rates and amounts. The polarimetric data can be used to deduce the physical characteristics of hydrometeors within the radar beam. + EAARL The EAARL (Experimental Advanced Airborne Research Lidar) is an airborne lidar that provides unprecedented capabilities to survey coral reefs, nearshore benthic habitats, coastal vegetation, and sandy beaches. EAARL has the unique real?time capability to detect, capture, and automatically adapt to each laser return backscatter over a large signal dynamic range and keyed to considerable variations in vertical complexity of the surface target. These features enable automatic adaptive acquisition of dramatically different surface types in a single EAARL overflight. This makes EAARL uniquely well suited for mapping applications such as coral reefs, bright sandy beaches, coastal vegetation, and trees where extreme variations in the laser backscatter complexity and signal strength are caused by different physical and optical characteristics. More InformationFor more information regarding the NASA Science and Exploration Directorate and the Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences Laboratory, see:http://science.gsfc.nasa.gov and http://neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov For more information regarding Code 614 activities at WFF, see: http://science.wff.nasa.gov For more information regarding NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, please see: http://www.wff.nasa.gov
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Author: SGT/Jeff Lee NASA Official: 614/John R. Moisan Last Updated: 09/24/2008 + Contact NASA | + Contact Us |