Remote Sensing Group
FAIRBANKS, Alaska— A new technique allows scientists to determine the landscape of locales more than 48 million miles from Earth. The method determines the diameter, depth and overall shape of other planets’ surface craters from shadows visible in images captured from probes traveling through the Milky Way. John Chappelow, a postdoctoral fellow with the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center and the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, is developing a computer program called CRATERZ, based on the method. The program will read an image’s resolution, and the solar elevation and azimuth to calculate the diameter, depth and parameters to describe the shapes of surface craters on celestial bodies millions of miles away. 
One of the best-kept secrets on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus is located in Room 204 of the Akasofu Building. There, the Alaska Satellite Facility’s User Services office, Map Office, and GeoData Center have merged to occupy one space.
In celebration of the15th anniversary of its first synthetic aperture radar data downlink, the Alaska Satellite Facility will host an open house. The open house will be held at the Elvey Building on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus on Saturday, August 26, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The community is invited to come out and learn more about this facility that provides services worldwide.
The University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, International Arctic Research Center, and Poker Flat Research Range will offer free public summer tours starting June 7.
Images showing smoke from Interior wildfires suitable for publication in newspapers and for still images for television are available from the Geographic Information Network of Alaska Web site, located at http://www.gina.alaska.edu/media/. These images have been reduced in size to allow for easy media use. The new images demonstrate how the smoke situation in Alaska's Interior has evolved over the last three days (July 27 through July 29, 2005). More images will be available as they are received and processed, so check the Web site often for updates.
The Geographic Information Network of Alaska (GINA) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks has supplied the summer's first Landsat 5 image to the Alaska Fire Service for mapping of the Sheenjek River Fire. The image was captured June 21, 2005, and portrays active burning as bright orange spots in the scene. Armed with this satellite image, fire personnel can better map the Sheenjek River Fire and formulate the proper response to fight the blaze northeast of Fairbanks.
The Geographic Information Network of Alaska (GINA) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute is collaborating with other agencies to provide near-real-time satellite data to the Bureau of Land Management's Alaska Fire Service. Armed with images taken from space, fire personnel will be able to track hot spots and fire movement, even under heavy smoke that may ground mapping aircraft. Data from Landsat 5 and MODIS satellites will be available to fire crews and other users in less than 24 hours through the GINA network.
New information about the Martian terrain suggests the Red Planet's surface once had water. High levels of hematite, a mineral associated with liquid water on Earth, were discovered on Mars last year. This important find suggests the possibility of ancient lakebeds or seas on the planet's surface and increases the odds that Mars once harbored life.
Forest fire smoke was so thick in Interior Alaska on some days during the summer of 2004 that firedetection aircraft could not fly. On a few of those occasions, the Alaska Fire Service sent smokejumpers to fight fires that were detected only by satellites more than 400 miles above Alaska, using information processed by the Geographic Information Network of Alaska (GINA) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Five scientists from the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) will lead sessions at the International Geophysical and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), September 20 through 24 at the Egan Convention Center in Anchorage.
