a Earth Remote Sensing Data Analysis Center

Trade and Industry, Japan) has been nominally operated for more than four years after the launch in December, 1999, with cooperation of NASA ( national Aeronautic and Space Administration) who operates the satellite called Terra. And ASTER has been acquiring more than 760 thousand scenes of data, and has been generating more than 640 thousand scenes. Currently, ASTER is being used as one of the standard mid-resolution space borne Earth Observing Remote Sensor worldwide. In fact, more than 1.5 millions of ASTER data were distributed. The authors has been conducting the operation of ASTER and performed evaluation of the performance of ASTER Ground Data System, based on the experience of the operation. ASTER succeeded in very complicated operation derived from the user requirement. Major features are as follows: (a) Flexible mission operation involving world weather forecast, (b) Correction for the misregistration caused by the Hardware constraints, (c) Data set generation including along track stereo pair which enables DEM generation (d) User friendly internet user interface including easy data search from huge amount of data set, on line data distribution, credit card payment, so on. (e) Achievement of high accuracy in geometry and radiometry.