Information on present mission

Reports

February 11, 2000
SRTM Report – 01
Houston-Johnson Space Center

The Space Shuttle Endeavour lifted off from Kennedy Space Center, today at 12:43 pm, Eastern Time, with Commander Kevin Kregel saying the crew was "ready to map the world".
Since this moment all the times will be expressed using the MET (Mission Elapsed Time).
The NASA and the Italian and German Space Agencies radars are now ready to produce the topography map of all the land between -58 and +60 degrees of latitude.
The most expected moment of the first day of the mission has been the deployment of the 60m mast (made up by 86 cubic segments).Everything is now ready to begin the mapping.

Paolo Ammendola
Mario Calamia

February 12, 2000
SRTM Report – 02
Houston-Johnson Space Center

The mapping started after the On Orbit Check Out. All the planned datatakes have been completely acquired and all the telemetry data confirm that the radars are working properly. The X-SAR raw data have been sent to JPL and to the Italian and German Processing and Archiving Facilities (I-PAF and D-PAF) and the first indications show that the data are of excellent quality. First images of exceptional quality have been produced by the Italian team operating the Italian Space Agency processor (One Bit Processor), conceived at the University of Naples and built by Alenia Aerospazio.
Great admiration for the products obtained has been shown by the american and german partners (recurring sentence "Why 4 bits if one is more then enough") who also asked for a copy of the images.
The Datatake processed was referred to the area between Arizona and New Mexico, and the related images can be seen on the Italian Space Agency WEB (www.asi.it) and MECSA WEB, under SRTM.
The images shown are: 

  1. Single channel medium resolution image
  2. Interferogram
  3. Digital Elevation Model
  4. DEM – 3D

 All these images refer to an area of 25km x 50 km.
The data are periodically sent to ground and continuously processed by the Italian team at JPL, thus showing the relaiability of the overall SRTM system

Paolo Ammendola
Mario Calamia

February 14, 2000
SRTM Report – 03
Houston-Johnson Space Center

Shuttle Endeavour flight is going smoothly ahead, with the exception of a small problem to the cool gas thrust at the end of the 60 meter mast. This has caused a propellant consumption more than expected.
The radar as well as the ground system is performing nominally. The downloaded data allow to produce very significant and high quality images. The mast performs very well.
Prof. Giorgio Franceschetti, representative of the Italian team in the today NASA press conference, has presented the performance and the images obtained with the Italian One Bit processor. Conventional processors have processing time almost two orders of magnitude greater than the One Bit processor. The same Digital Elevation Model in three dimensions, both processed with conventional processing (4 bit) and the One Bit processing have been compared showing that a neglegible loss of quality exists and can be tolarated for a certain number of applications (expecially on board processing). For these applications the One Bit Processor is an excellent processor.

Paolo Ammendola
Mario Calamia

February 16, 2000
SRTM Report – 04
Houston-Johnson Space Center

The onboard radar continue to send high quality data on ground to the processing facilities. These data are processed by the Italian One Bit Processor providing in real time full resolution single radar images together with Digital Elevation Models (off-line processing). These images, together with the images produced by the ASI Processing and Archiving and Distribution facility (I-PAF) are at scientist disposal on the ASI web pages.
On Tuesday evening the word radar coverage was equivalent to the overall area of Africa, North and South America. Part of this area has been covered twice as by pre-mission plans.
All the recorded data will be available after three months from the Shuttle landing. During these 11 days mission two sets of data are sent to ground: the data set received by one antenna only and the data set received by the two antennas. Three dimensional products can be obtained only using the data set coming from the two antennas.
We received data on ground coming from one antenna and therefore we inserted in the web only bidimensional images. The data are related to the ground strip which includes Pianosa and Elba islands , Toscany ( including part of Florence) and Comacchio.
These images, being processed by the One Bit Processor, have not the same quality of the precision processed ones (available in short time by I-PAF on the ASI page "Operational Site")
For what the Shuttle propellant problem is concerned, 18 options are now under evaluation, thus increasing the hope to go back to nominal pre-mission planning.

Paolo Ammendola
Mario Calamia

February 19, 2000
SRTM Report – 05
Houston-Johnson Space Center

The actions decided by NASA and performed by the Mission Control Center and by the astronauts have obtained the hoped result. The mapping operations will continue till day 9, hours 18, much more than the scheduled plan. This will give us a further flight over Italy, just few hours before the mast stowing. The mission goes ahead smoothly and we are now planning the post-mission activities. A recent X-SAR Data Take shows Oberpfaffenhofen, Bavaria. An enlargement shows an area around Munich Airport. The image was taken during snow showers and reduced visibility, demonstrating the all-weather potential of the radar.

Paolo Ammendola
Mario Calamia

February 21, 2000
SRTM Report – 06
Houston-Johnson Space Center
 

On Monday February 21, hour 00:52 p.m. italian time, the radar observation has stopped as planned. The earth surface observed at least once amounts to 119.050 million square Km while 112.66 million square Km has been observed at least twice.

The commands for the antenna positioning and the mast re-entry in the shuttle Cargo Bay started at 1:34 pm (Italian time). All the re-entry of the mast has gone accordingly to expectations, except for the last 20 cm for which two hours have been spent. The scientific activity in Houston is over. Tomorrow the Shuttle will land at Cape Canaveral or Edwards depending on weather conditions.

Paolo Ammendola
Mario Calamia

March 13, 2000
SRTM Report – 07
Florence

Space Shuttle Endeavour returned to Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) on February 22, 2000 at 6:22 p.m. EST, after traveling 4 million miles in space and mapping more than 47 million square miles of the earth's surface. The orbiter and the six-member flight crew made a flawless landing on the second of two Florida landing opportunities. The first opportunity was at 4:50 p.m., but crosswinds at the SLF violated established weather constraints. The flight crew returned to Houston, TX, the day after for the usual celebrations and to meet and to thank all the Team, of the Johnson Space Center, they worked with during the 11 days of mission. The mission had an extraordinary success reaching the 99.96% of the foreseen targets.

Paolo Ammendola
Mario Calamia