BioSCape South Africa 2023

In October/November 2023, NASA's LVIS Facility flew as a part of NASA's BioSCape mission in South Africa. Sixteen science flights were flown over various ground targets in the area. LVIS was co-flown with the HyTES instrument on the NASA G-V.


Flight trajectories are available on this page.


Use the python code posted here to view the data products from this mission.

LVIS Mission Information

LVIS Lidar
Instrument: LVIS-F (1.16 mrad)
Flight Platform: NASA Gulfstream V
Nominal Flight Altitude:7 km AGL ~5 km
(operations w/ HyTES)
Nominal Footprint Diameter: 8 m6 m
Data Products: LVISF1B, LVISF2
LVIS Cameras
Camera Model: PhaseOne iXM-RS150F Canon EOS 5DS R
Lens Models: Rodenstock 180 mm Carl Zeiss Makro-Planar
T* 100mm f/2 ZE
Image Resolution: 150 Megapixels
14,204px x 10,652px		 50.3 Megapixels
5,792px x 8,688px
Nominal Resolution: 2.1 km x 1.4 km
(15 cm/px @ 23,000 ft)		 1.6 km x 1.1 km
(30 cm/px @ 23,000 ft)
Nominal Overlap: 67% 67%
Data Product: LVIS_CAM150MP LVIS_CAM050MP

Resources

Airports

  • KEFD - Ellington Field (Houston, TX, USA)
  • GVAC - Amílcar Cabral International Airport (Sal, Cape Verde)
  • FACT - Cape Town International Airport (Cape Town, South Africa)

Data Products

LVIS Data Products Format Download Location
Flight TrajectoriesKMZThis page
LVIS L1A Camera ImageryJPG*NASA EarthData, NSIDC1
LVIS Facility L1B Geolocated WaveformsHDF, LDS 2.0.5NASA EarthData, NSIDC1
LVIS Facility L2 Elevation and Height ProductsASCII TXT, LDS 2.0.5NASA EarthData, NSIDC1

1 At NSIDC, search for date ranges 01 Oct 2023 through 30 Nov 2023

View MJD Date Region / Remarks GPS Flight Trajectory L2 Gridded KMZs† Photo KMZs†
CAM150MP CAM050MP
60229 12 October 2023 Sensor calibration flight, Gulf of Mexico [kmz]
60233 16 October 2023 Houston, TX to Sal, Cape Verde [kmz]
60235 18 October 2023 Sal, Cape Verde to Cape Town, South Africa [kmz]
60237 20 October 2023 BioSCape Box 8, Cederberg [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60239 22 October 2023 BioSCape Boxes 2, 3 [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60242 25 October 2023 BioSCape Boxes 3, 10, 12, Algoa Bay [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60243 26 October 2023 BioSCape Boxes 8, 9, 11, 12, 20, 21 [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60245 28 October 2023 BioSCape Boxes 1, 8, 15 [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60246 29 October 2023 BioSCape Box 8, Cederberg [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60247 30 October 2023 BioSCape Boxes 13, 6 [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60248 31 October 2023 BioSCape Box 5 [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60249 01 November 2023 BioSCape Boxes 10, 12, 14 [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60253 05 November 2023 BioSCape Boxes 7, 14 [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60256 08 November 2023 BioSCape Boxes 7, 12, 18 [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60257 09 November 2023 BioSCape Boxes 1, 5, 13 [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60258 10 November 2023 BioSCape Boxes 10, 11 [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60260 12 November 2023 BioSCape SF14 [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
60261 13 November 2023 BioSCape SF15 [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz]
60263 15 November 2023 BioSCape Box 12 [kmz] [ZG]
[RH95] 		[kmz] [kmz]
October/November 2023 All Flights [kmz]

*Preliminary LVIS Coverage locations are generated shortly after a flight and based on quicklook product information and are intended for general guidance only.
Key: Red=0%, Pink=1-10%, Orange=10-20%, Yellow=20-50%, Green=50-100%
†Warning: Gridded and Photo KMZ files are large and may take some time to load in Google Earth