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Full catalog/MASTER_GEMx_Summer_2025_2472
MASTER_GEMx_Summer_2025_2472·v1·dataset

Aircraft imaging for geology mapping (summer 2025)

MASTER: Geological Earth Mapping Experiment (GEMx), Summer 2025
land NASA ORNL_CLOUD Level 1B multiple
In plain English

What it measures. Calibrated aircraft imagery recording how much energy surfaces reflect and emit across 50 wavelength bands from visible to thermal infrared, covering arid parts of the southwestern U.S. at about 50-meter detail.

How it's made. Collected by the MASTER instrument flown on NASA's high-altitude ER-2 aircraft during 29 flights in summer 2025, processed to georeferenced Level-1B calibrated radiance.

How & where you'd use it. Gathered to map rocks and minerals, especially critical minerals, across arid and semi-arid western U.S. landscapes; supports geological mapping and mineral exploration research.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › INFRARED WAVELENGTHS › INFRARED RADIANCESPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › INFRARED WAVELENGTHS › THERMAL INFRAREDSPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › VISIBLE WAVELENGTHS › VISIBLE RADIANCE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2025-05-23 → 2025-09-23
  • Measured byNASA ER-2 (MASTER)
  • Processing levelLevel 1B
  • Spatial extent-120.23, 30.2242, -103.701, 44.2169
  • Formatsmultiple
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
  • Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
  • Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description

This dataset includes Level 1B (L1B) data products from the MODIS/ASTER Airborne Simulator (MASTER) instrument. The spectral data were collected during 29 flights aboard a NASA ER-2 aircraft over California, Oregon, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, US, from 2025-05-23 to 2025-09-23. The Geological Earth Mapping Experiment (GEMx) research project used NASA's Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) and MODIS/ASTER Airborne Simulator (MASTER) instruments to collect the measurements over the country's arid and semi-arid regions, including parts of California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico, to map portions of southwest US for critical minerals. Data products include L1B georeferenced multispectral imagery of calibrated radiance in 50 bands covering wavelengths of 0.460 to 12.879 micrometers at approximately 50-meter spatial resolution. The L1B data is provided in HDF-4 and KMZ formats. In addition, the dataset includes the flight path, spectral band information, instrument configuration, ancillary notes, and summary information for each flight, and browse images derived from each L1B data file.

Get the data

master_gemx_summer_2025_2472_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="MASTER_GEMx_Summer_2025_2472",
    version="1",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from ORNL_CLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.