Anywhere below the Space Station's orbit, in other words south of 51.6 degrees north latitude (and north of 51.6 degrees in the southern hemisphere). Unlike Landsat, which always has the same flight path over the ground, the ISS ground track varies from day to day. In our area it will be mostly west to east (some times heading northeast, sometimes heading southeast. At 51.6 degrees latitude, always straight east.)

While it will be technically possible to image anywhere as described above, that is a lot of ground to cover for a small camera and a Windows 2000 laptop computer. For the most part we intend to limit our routine imaging to the area of the UMAC region, namely ND, SD, MN, MT, WY, and ID.

That said, our emphasis is on gaining understanding of how low latency high-temporal imagery (rapid delivery and frequent revisit times) can benefit applications of remote sensing of vegetation. If there is a compelling reason to image someplace other than the UMAC region (we have had inquiries from eastern US, Africa, Australia) we will attempt to do so, within available resources.

In any case, no imagery will be acquired without an end user request for tasking. We are setting up a tasking request process which will be similar in some respects to what we have been doing for our AEROCam airborne sensor, though with some obvious differences.

About 57 kilometers, or 35 miles. However that is when the ISS is at an altitude of 400 Km. The ISS altitude varies quite a bit, from 420 to 350 Km, when higher the swath width will be wider and vice versa. But 35 miles is a good average to use.

8-bit images, 2-bands (red and near infrared).

Again this varies dramatically, given the varying ground track of the ISS. We have an off-nadir look capability, meaning we can point the camera to the side up to about 30 degrees, which significantly improves our re-visit frequencies.

Under best conditions (long days, middle of the summer, right phase of the orbit), we may can have days where certain ground locations can be imaged 3-4 times in one day. At the other extreme, there will be periods of up to 3 weeks long when every time the ISS passes over, the ground location is in darkness. When these 'blackout' periods occur varies and are hard to predict far in advance -- we hope to have a reasonably good guess of their timing for the coming year by the beginning of the growing season.

ISSAC is still in the padded duffel bags in which it was launched. Although launched in November, ISSAC is technically a 'Reserve' payload until April -- which means others have priority until then. That said, astronauts are currently scheduled to install ISSAC in late March, after which it will be powered on for the first time. Once this happens, we expect functional checkout and ground calibration checks to take 1-2 months.

In order to request an image, one will need to be a registered user. We are currently developing an online system for people to use. There will be an application process (similar to the paper method we have been using for AEROCam requests, if anyone is familiar with that; briefly describe your operation and what you hope to get from the data, desired locations and times, etc.). This online system should be in place also by March timeframe. People can indicate advance interest and get emails on status by registering at the ISSAC signup page. As a final note, once an image is taken it will be put on Digital NGP and made available to all -- in other words anyone will be able to access ISSAC imagery, but only registered users will be able to request specific coverages.

Best we can guess so far, difficult to test on the ground. We will know better after the above-mentioned on-orbit checkout.

There are several online sources to find out where ISS is right now, but that doesn't help much when wanting to know where it will be a month from now. We expect to have such a tool/info source on our website before operations begin. For more details on what to expect regarding image acquisition, image size, etc., see other questions in this FAQ.