Landsat Next Defined

Landsat Next Defined

Landsat Next is on the horizon—the new mission will not only ensure continuity of the longest space-based record of Earth’s land surface, it will fundamentally transform the breadth and depth of actionable information freely available to end users. Take a look at the new capabilities that will define the next Landsat mission.

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Landsat Next Defined

Landsat Next Defined

Landsat Next is on the horizon—the new mission will not only ensure continuity of the longest space-based record of Earth’s land surface, it will fundamentally transform the breadth and depth of actionable information freely available to end users. Take a look at the new capabilities that will define the next Landsat mission.

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“The Landsat archive enables us to develop products that tackle problems and address issues at a continental scale. For a country the size of Australia, this would simply not be possible without free and open access to the full time-series that the Landsat archive provides.”


“Without the free and open Landsat data policy, a lot of commercial applications wouldn’t be feasible and a lot of commercial companies—including GDA—would be very different than they are.”


“When I arrived in Gombe 50-plus years ago, looking up at the stars, it never occurred to me that one day, we’d be relying on remote sensing—satellites circling the globe high above—to help unite communities of people and save Gombe’s chimpanzees. NASA—through its resources and data and funding—is helping us to apply the kinds of innovative solutions needed to address the complex problems people and chimpanzees face today.”


“The archive is just going to continue to yield good information, good science, better management, reduced costs… The biggest contribution of Landsat will be that archive.”


“There are roughly 400 billion land pixels in a single [Landsat] global mosaic.” (With at least one image of every location on Earth per season every year, the entire 43-year Landsat record contains more than 50 trillion pixels.)


“Landsat is key to a wide range of applications that support global glacier monitoring and elucidate the impacts of global climate change.”


“There is no better source of information [than Landsat] to document the changes happening to our planet’s landscapes­—and we need this continuous record to help our communities become more resilient to the dramatic effects we are seeing.”


“The user community has expressed great interest in maintaining Landsat continuity, supporting synergy with the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, and enabling new emerging applications that are critical to tackle the challenges in today’s global environment.”


“I can’t imagine what it would be like to describe what this volcano did without having a time series of Landsat.”


“Our ability to analyze decades of history through the Landsat data record provided a strong backbone to this work.”


“Continuing the critical observations made by the Landsat satellites is important now and their value will only grow in the future, given the long term environmental changes we are seeing on planet Earth.”


“Landsat is really important because it gives us that time component. We can go back in time and see what an area let’s say a coastal zone or a mangrove forest has been like over time.”


“The Landsat data record is absolutely invaluable—wetland managers can start to understand if changes they are seeing take place over months, years or decades.”


“This is an example of something government can do well: investing in infrastructure that broadly benefits society, and provides a stable platform for the development of businesses and economic activity. Landsat is the data equivalent of the interstate highway system, a public good that has spawned a thriving for-profit remote sensing industry in the US and beyond.”


“I would summarize Landsat 8’s science impacts in three ways: More data, better data, and improved, expanded applications.”


“Landsat Next to me is an incredible mission… I really think of it as a game changer. The measurements provided to the community not only provide continuity with our current 52-year plus archive, but also drive new and emerging applications and science research. It’s very important to the American people and of course to science.” 


“Now that the entire Landsat archive is freely available it has become economically feasible to monitor disturbance over large areas using satellite time series.”


“Landsat 8 imagery is an incredibly powerful resource. It is some of the most valuable open data produced by the US Government. Our partners rely on Landsat data for everything from evaluating droughts to tracking conflict.”


“[I]n 2008 USGS first instituted the policy of giving away Landsat data for free (first with Landsat 7, then the rest of the archive in 2009). It probably felt like a crazy choice at the time after billions of dollars of investment in the program… but the effect was immediate and extraordinary. Roughly a 100-fold increase in downloads in a decade.”


“Several satellite systems can now measure the surface urban heat island, but the Landsat program provides decades of continuous, comparable data in the detail necessary to examine variations within a city. That continuity helps scientists measure the impact of changes and track how development patterns change a neighborhood’s heat profile.”


“When we showed historical Landsat and more recent high resolution images to communities and shared our analysis, people realized what they’d lost over time and wanted to engage in conversations about how to bring the forests back.”


“We use Landsat images on a daily basis at SkyTruth for environmental monitoring.”


“While many previous studies have reported ongoing ice shelf thinning around Antarctica since the 1990s, we didn’t previously know that a lot of it started around then.”


“I really believe that Landsat data made a change in how we perceive global change. All of the things we have done so far would not have been possible without the unique Landsat dataset”


Landsat 9 bw
Landsat 9 bw
Landsat 9 bw

The NASA/USGS Landsat Program provides the longest continuous space-based record of Earth’s land in existence. Landsat data give us information essential for making informed decisions about Earth’s resources and environment.