Multispectral Atmospheric Mapping Sensor

The MAMS is a modified Daedalus Scanner flown aboard the ER-2 aircraft. It is designed to study weather related phenomena including storm system structure, cloud-top temperatures, and upper atmospheric water vapor. The scanner retains the eight silicon-detector channels in the visible/near-infrared region found on the Daedalus Thematic Mapper Simulator, with the addition of four channels in the infrared relating to specific atmospheric features.

The scanner views a 37 kilometer wide scene of the Earth from the ER2 altitude of about 20 kilometers. Each MAMS footprint (individual field of view) has a horizontal resolution of 100 meters at nadir. Since the ER2 travels at about 208 meters per second, a swath of MAMS data 37 by 740 kilometers is collected every hour. The nominal duration of an ER2 flight is 6 hours (maximum of about 7 hours).