ASTER captured Mount St. Helens volcano in Washington on Aug. 8, 2000. The volcano erupted violently on May 18, 1980, killing nearly 60 people and destroying all life in the area.

On April 1, all Earth imagery from ASTER, the prolific Japanese remote sensing instrument aboard NASA’s Terra spacecraft, became free to the public, which provides access to almost 3 million images of Earth dating back to its launch in 1999.

The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) uses images of Earth to create maps and monitors the changing surface of the planet. The public now has unlimited access to the instrument’s extensive 16-plus-year database, which currently consists of more than 2.95 million individual scenes with content ranging from massive scars left behind by an EF-5 tornado across the Oklahoma landscape to the aftermath of flooding in Pakistan, according to NASA.

Before the images were made free, users could only access ASTER’s global digital topographic maps of Earth online at no cost, but paid Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) a nominal fee to order other ASTER data products. With this new change of policy, METI and NASA have cited ASTER’s longevity and continued environmental monitoring capabilities.

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Launched in 1999, the instrument has gone above and beyond its five-year design and will continue to operate as part of the suite of five Earth-observing instruments on Terra in the future.

“We anticipate a dramatic increase in the number of users of our data, with new and exciting results to come,” said NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory ASTER science team leader Michael Abrams.

ASTER is used to create detailed maps of land surface temperature, reflection and elevation. It takes images in visible and thermal infrared wavelengths. ASTER covers 99 percent of Earth’s landmass and spans from 83 degrees north latitude to 83 degrees south.

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