Title: Virtual Appliance for EOS Terra and Aqua Direct Broadcast Data Processing

Authors: Liam Gumley

Abstract:

The NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) Terra and Aqua spacecraft continue to be a highly valuable
source of real-time earth observations since their launches in 1999 and 2002, respectively.
Multispectral image data from MODIS on Terra and Aqua, and combined and infrared and
microwave data from AIRS, AMSU, and AMSR-E on Aqua are used for a wide variety of real-time
applications by users on every continent, due to an estimated 200+ X-band ground stations around
the world. The availability of unencrypted direct broadcast from Terra and Aqua, combined with
freely available data processing software, has enabled the sensor observations and derived from
Terra and Aqua to be used in diverse applications such as weather forecasting, wildfire detection,
burned area mapping, sea and lake ice monitoring, air quality forecasts, and ocean fishing
forecasting.

The SSEC Direct Broadcast Virtual Machine (DBVM) is a full-featured processing system for data
acquired by direct broadcast from Terra and Aqua. It is implemented in the form of a VMware
Virtual Appliance that is easy to install and run on platforms including Microsoft Windows, Apple OS
X, and Intel Linux. The DBVM Virtual Appliance can be installed, configured, and start creating data
products within 10 minutes of completing download of the appliance. DBVM is easy to install and
operate, and is designed to be easy to modify, maintain, and upgrade. The system is highly reliable
and fault tolerant, and is fast and efficient on modest computer hardware. The DBVM virtual
appliance is implemented using Ubuntu Linux as the guest operating system. DBVM uses freely
available software to create atmosphere, land, and ocean products from MODIS, AIRS, AMSU, and
AMSR-E. Suppliers of the software packages used by DBVM include the NASA Ocean Biology
Processing Group, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the NASA GSFC Direct Readout Laboratory,
the University of Lille, and the University of Dundee.

This presentation will describe the design of the DBVM Virtual Appliance and demonstrate the user
experience and performance of the system.