Taking Earth’s Temperature – Space Scientists and Engineers Team Up to Devise Next-Gen Heat Detection Satellites
Joint ESA-NASA NETSense Airborne Campaign over the city of London and Europe
Ticketed event – register here
For the first time ever, a collaboration between the NASA and the European Space Agency will see one of the world’s most sophisticated thermal imagers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion laboratory flown over London and the South East of England.
Next week, the pioneering airborne science campaign to measure the temperature of the land from the air and help assess the state of Europe’s agricultural areas and urban regions is launching. The campaign aims to inform designs for the next generation of thermal imaging satellites which collect vital data helping to address global challenges, such as food security and water use under a changing climate.
The campaign, led by King’s College London and coordinated with National Environment Research Council’s (NERC) National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO), brings together highly sophisticated airborne imaging instruments from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and NERC-NCEO, and will fly them together in the British Antarctic Survey’s Twin Otter aircraft to collect data over London, and various agricultural areas in the UK and Europe. The data will be used for new science studies and specifically to aid in the design of a new satellite mission being considered now by the European Space Agency (ESA). It’s this satellite mission which will map levels of land surface temperature and evapotranspiration essentially allowing us to understand the distribution of heat within an urban area and how much water different plants require in different regions and how they respond to stresses such as droughts.
We invite you to join us for a press briefing on Friday 7 June at 1.30pm and a tour of the kit and the BAS plane alongside the historic aircraft at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford. Places are limited and registration is essential. Register here
Programme (25 visitors max)
13.30 – 13.45 Arrival at Duxford
14.00 Technical briefing.
Introduction to the initiative (15mins) Overview of the instruments (10mins) Aircraft operation and flight plans (10mins) Example Data and Analytics (5 mins) Tour of aircraft and instrumentation and Q&A (15 mins)
15.10 Photoshoot of team and aircraft
15.15 Tea and coffee-chance for 5-min interview slots with the scientific/technical leads
(need to pre-book and send in questions in advance)
15.45 Event close. Attendees welcome to stay on and look around the museum
