Terra, Aqua, and Aura Direct Broadcast-providing Earth Science data for real-time applications

The need for real-time data to aid in disaster management and monitoring has been clearly demonstrated for the past several years, e.g., during fires, the tsunami in Indonesia in 2004, the hurricane Katrina in 2005, and more recently, the Iceland volcano eruption and the oil spill in the gulf off the Louisiana coast. Users want (and often require) the means to get earth observation data for operational regional use as soon as it is captured by satellites. This is especially true during events that can cause loss of human life and/or property. To meet this need, NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) satellites, Terra, Aqua, and Aura provide real-time data useful to disaster management teams. This paper describes the satellites, their Direct Broadcast (DB) capabilities, the data uses, and the Direct Readout (DR) processing environment required to address decision support systems.