NASA is aiding firefighters and managers battling wild
fires across the United States. NASA provides views from
space before, during, and after fires. The information allows
firefighters to respond to wildfires quickly, effectively
allocate precious resources, and helps make fire fighting a
little easier and safer.
A fire detection feature story is available on NASA’s Web
site. The story describes how NASA is expanding the United
States Forest Service’s fire fighting toolkit by providing
images faster and more often.
NASA provides valuable information to fire managers and
firefighters by combining data from multiple spacecraft and
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Coupled with data from Forest
Service airborne instruments and other data from space,
scientists and fire managers have a more complete picture of
the situation in near real-time. This allows them to allocate
resources and plan how best to battle blazes. In addition,
complete fire maps are being generated four times a day.
These are available on the Internet to everyone, from key
decision makers to citizens.
NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and Goddard Space
Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. are developing these fire
fighting tools, technologies and capabilities. They are being
developed as part of NASA’s Earth Science Enterprise, and the
agency’s mission to understand and protect our home planet.
NASA’s Earth Science Enterprise is dedicated to understanding
the Earth as an integrated system and applying Earth System
Science to improve prediction of climate, weather, and
natural hazards using the unique vantage point of space.
The firefighting technology story is under the “Life on
Earth” link at:
