The 17th William T. Pecora Memorial Remote Sensing Symposium was held in Denver, Colorado from November 16–20. The theme of the meeting was “The future of land imaging… going operational.”

The Opening General Session focused on Pecora’s vision of an Earth-observing satellite program to help manage natural resources, the ensuing USGS/NASA partnership, the resulting Landsat program, and its land-imaging legacy. The closing session was titled, “Entering A New Landsat Era—The Future is Now.”
Throughout the Pecora 17 conference, Landsat was brightly featured. There were two Landsat Data Continuity Mission Sessions—“Status and Plans” and “Instrument Characterization,”  as well as a general Landsat session, “Landsat: Past, Present and Future.” Landsat-related talks were given by Jim Irons, Jeanine Murphy-Morris, Brian Markham, Jim Story, Jeannie Allen, Laura Rocchio, Terry Arvidson, Julia Barsi, Dennis Helder, Jeff Masek, and Shannon Franks from the NASA Landsat Project Offices; as well as Ron Morfitt, Bruce Quirk, Kristi Kline, Ray Byrnes, John Dwyer, and Ron Hayes from the USGS Landsat team; and Tom Loveland, Prasad Thenkabail, James Vogelmann, Richard Allen, Toni Morse, Randy Wynne, and Sam Goward from the wider USGS Landsat Science Team.
At the close of Wednesday’s sessions, a Landsat 5 reception sponsored by Lockheed Martin and Ball Aerospace was held in celebration of Landsat 5’s 25th year of operation.
In addition to these activities, on Monday, Nov. 17, three Landsat Legacy oral histories were conducted at the conference center, including an interview with two past Pecora Award-winners, Virginia Norwood and John DeNoyer. And on Wednesday, Nov. 19 ten short, informal interviews about Landsat 5 were conduced.