AIRS

AIRS Daily Earth Maps from Space

AIRS Daily Earth Maps From Space

How Our Near-Real-Time Satellite Feed Maps Are Made

The AIRS Daily Earth Maps from Space are created using data from both the daytime and the nighttime portions of the orbit. Except in the case of the air temperature maps, data acquired during the nighttime overpass is averaged with the data retrieved during the daytime overpass, resulting in greater coverage in the daily maps.

From the time the data is acquired by AIRS in space, it takes roughly 3 hours to produce and load the maps onto our web server. This lag-time includes the wait for downlink to the groundstation, processing the data, creating the maps, and the hourly updates to our web server. Therefore, we refer to these maps as being made in "near-real-time".

Quick Facts

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder, AIRS, is an instrument on-board NASA's Aqua satellite.

AIRS orbits Earth from pole to pole fifteen times per day.

The orbit is sun-synchronous, which means the satellite passes over the same part of the Earth at roughly the same local time each day. AIRS crosses the equator from South to North at 1:30 PM local time and from North to South at 1:30 AM local time. Data collected by the instrument is downlinked to groundstations approximately once per orbit.