NASA technology to help in upcoming fire season - video

With fire season set to begin, the U.S. Forest Service is arming itself with a high tech tool born in a NASA laboratory. ABC7 News climbed on board a one-of-a-kind airplane that's helping to save homes and lives. The U.S. Forest Service has a lot of airplanes, but only one jet. And the view from that jet is something spectacular. You won't see these multicolored mountains out the window of the airplane. You'll see them through a NASA-designed infrared sensor on the bottom, when it's looking at this.  "We fly over the larger fires and give a perimeter map, so they have eyes on it in the morning so they can plan for the day," said Dan Johnson. Johnson is one of the pilots who fly in the dead of night, taking thermal images of the biggest wildfires in the west.  "It's dynamic. We don't know where we're going to be every night because of the nature of the fires. Typically we fly maybe four states in one night," said Johnson. Not long ago, the best map they could hope for was an accurate perimeter, a line around the fire. But now, NASA's technology gives them a detailed heat map. "You're able to make much improved predictions of where that fire might go or where it might stall out," said Vince Ambrosia, a Cal State scientist at NASA Ames...more

Here's the ABC video report: