TRIP REPORT:              David Aaron
                                      Dept of Physics
                                      688-6520 

TRIP:            Washington DC area  March 23-28 (late) 

PURPOSES:              Attend the “High Spatial Resolution Commercial Imagery Workshop”
                                  Meet with Personnel at Goddard Space Flight Center

This meeting is the primary annual workshop for JACIET (Joint Agency Commercial Imagery Evaluation Team) of which SDSU is one of the primary members.  Dennis Helder, Jim Dewald, Tim Ruggles, Jason Choi and myself were the SDSU representatives with Dr. Helder presenting a paper and Mr. Choi presented a poster.  This workshop included presentations from both governmental agencies (NASA/NIMA/USGS and their affiliated contractors), several universities, and from commercial groups (primarily DigitalGlobe and Space Imaging).  The focus is to share results from ongoing research programs and to develop somewhat coordinated plans for continuing research.

                This was my first year in attendance, and it was a fantastic learning experience.  My major research interest is in the vicarious calibration of satellite imagery.  The first and second days included a general overview of programs and platforms along with a concentration on satellite system design parameters, calibrations and characterizations.  This work is all directly applicable to the work being done by our group in interpreting and verifying accuracy (both radiometric and geometric) of the remote data being used by SDSU in the precision agriculture research program.  The third day of the conference moved into applications covering forestry, agriculture, urban studies and other topics (my personal favorite was “Reconstructing Troy after Agamemnon” which a great digression into using remote sensing in archeological studies). 

                The formal presentations were all very instructive; however, the primary benefit for me was in meeting one-on-one the individuals within this area of the remote sensing.  The community doing this work is actually quite small and appears to be very supportive.  I really am looking forward to being actively involved and working with this group.

                We rounded out the workshop by spending a day meeting with various individuals at the Goddard facility (who we have actively collaborated with).  Dr. Helder made several presentations to their scientists and staff, while I met with personnel from their calibration facility and along with general introductions, participated in making plans for a multi-group spectrometer calibration ‘round-robin’ for later in the summer.

                Overall, it was a fascinating trip.  I am new to this particular research project and nothing puts things into perspective more quickly than meeting with and seeing presentations by colleagues established in the discipline.  I really look forward to spending more time in the area and meeting with these scientists.  

David Aaron

Back to "Trips and Collaboration" SD Personnel and NASA Centers / NASA-related activities website