Landsat Science

Landsat Science

Landsat Science

Landsat Science

Landsat Science

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

Landsat Science

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

Landsat Science

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

Landsat Science

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

Satellites

Data

Benefits

Satellites

Data

Benefits

Forty Years of Change in Louisiana’s Wetlands Scientists used Landsat satellite images to detect both abrupt and gradual changes and to examine how phenomena, from storms to sea level rise, have reshaped coastal ecosystems.

Forty Years of Change in Louisiana’s Wetlands

May 19, 2025

Landsat images show that in the past 40 years alone, Louisiana’s coastal wetlands have undergone substantial changes.

Thumbnail for the Landsat 7 tribute video featuring the satellite 3D model orbiting Earth, and two large circles with Landsat 7 images inside.

A Planet in Focus – Landsat 7’s Legacy

June 10, 2025

Celebrating the 25-year mission of Landsat 7, a NASA/USGS satellite that revolutionized Earth observation with high-resolution imagery used in agriculture, disaster response, climate research, and more.

Point Hope in Alaska, where areas of the coastline are eroding and others are accreting

Shifting Coastlines in the Arctic

June 9, 2025

The Arctic is changing rapidly. Recent research unveiled a new dataset of 40 years of coastlines shifting across the Arctic.

This is an illustration of the Landsat 7 satellite acquiring imagery of the Earth from space. The artist rendering of Landsat 7 is above an image of Earth and is scanning a swath.

A Final Farewell to Landsat 7

June 5, 2025

The Landsat 7 satellite launched in April 1999 and will be decommissioned after 26 years in orbit. Its science mission, focused on collecting imagery data of Earth’s land and inland waters, spanned 25 years.

Forty Years of Change in Louisiana’s Wetlands Scientists used Landsat satellite images to detect both abrupt and gradual changes and to examine how phenomena, from storms to sea level rise, have reshaped coastal ecosystems.

Forty Years of Change in Louisiana’s Wetlands

May 19, 2025

Landsat images show that in the past 40 years alone, Louisiana’s coastal wetlands have undergone substantial changes.

Thumbnail for the Landsat 7 tribute video featuring the satellite 3D model orbiting Earth, and two large circles with Landsat 7 images inside.

A Planet in Focus – Landsat 7’s Legacy

June 10, 2025

Celebrating the 25-year mission of Landsat 7, a NASA/USGS satellite that revolutionized Earth observation with high-resolution imagery used in agriculture, disaster response, climate research, and more.

Point Hope in Alaska, where areas of the coastline are eroding and others are accreting

Shifting Coastlines in the Arctic

June 9, 2025

The Arctic is changing rapidly. Recent research unveiled a new dataset of 40 years of coastlines shifting across the Arctic.

This is an illustration of the Landsat 7 satellite acquiring imagery of the Earth from space. The artist rendering of Landsat 7 is above an image of Earth and is scanning a swath.

A Final Farewell to Landsat 7

June 5, 2025

The Landsat 7 satellite launched in April 1999 and will be decommissioned after 26 years in orbit. Its science mission, focused on collecting imagery data of Earth’s land and inland waters, spanned 25 years.

Forty Years of Change in Louisiana’s Wetlands Scientists used Landsat satellite images to detect both abrupt and gradual changes and to examine how phenomena, from storms to sea level rise, have reshaped coastal ecosystems.

Forty Years of Change in Louisiana’s Wetlands

May 19, 2025

Landsat images show that in the past 40 years alone, Louisiana’s coastal wetlands have undergone substantial changes.

Thumbnail for the Landsat 7 tribute video featuring the satellite 3D model orbiting Earth, and two large circles with Landsat 7 images inside.

A Planet in Focus – Landsat 7’s Legacy

June 10, 2025

Celebrating the 25-year mission of Landsat 7, a NASA/USGS satellite that revolutionized Earth observation with high-resolution imagery used in agriculture, disaster response, climate research, and more.

Point Hope in Alaska, where areas of the coastline are eroding and others are accreting

Shifting Coastlines in the Arctic

June 9, 2025

The Arctic is changing rapidly. Recent research unveiled a new dataset of 40 years of coastlines shifting across the Arctic.

This is an illustration of the Landsat 7 satellite acquiring imagery of the Earth from space. The artist rendering of Landsat 7 is above an image of Earth and is scanning a swath.

A Final Farewell to Landsat 7

June 5, 2025

The Landsat 7 satellite launched in April 1999 and will be decommissioned after 26 years in orbit. Its science mission, focused on collecting imagery data of Earth’s land and inland waters, spanned 25 years.

“You need decades of data to say that a change in kelp is due to climate change rather than other cyclical factors, with Landsat, we have those data.”

— Luba Reshitnyk, Hakai geographer , Dec 6, 2018

“Until we made the map of coral reefs with Landsat 7, global maps of reefs had not improved a lot since the amazing maps that Darwin drafted.”

— Frank Muller-Karger, professor of oceanography, University of South Florida , Jun 17, 2015

“For more than fifty years now, Landsat satellites have helped us learn more about how Earth systems work, how human activities affect those systems, and how we can make better decisions for the future. Landsat 9, the latest joint effort by NASA and USGS, proudly carries on that remarkable record.”

— NASA Administrator Bill Nelson , Aug 11, 2022

“The value of Landsat data is internationally recognized as indispensable to science, natural resource management, commerce, security, foreign policy, agriculture, and education.”

— National Geospatial Advisory Committee, Landsat Advisory Group , Sep 18, 2012

“Landsat is history’s longest-running Earth imaging project. Its enormous data set cements it as an industry standard.”

— Frank Warmerdam , Mar 19, 2015

“The long, consistent view of Earth from space provided by Landsat sparks advances in science, enables more efficient natural resources management, and promotes profitable applications of the data in commerce and industry. In step with the National Research Council and other objective reviews, the non-federal Landsat Advisory Group has found that the broad benefits of Landsat far outweigh the cost.”

— USGS press release , Jan 14, 2015

“Remote sensing with satellites such as Landsat and sensors such as MODIS allows scientists to conduct a range of studies they wouldn’t otherwise be able to.”

— Karl Flessa, co-chief scientist of the Minute 319 Science Team , Dec 17, 2014

“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”

— Dr. Patrick Hostert, Geomatics Lab, Humboldt University , Apr 18, 2018

“Assessing land cover change, especially the dynamics of smaller water bodies, requires spatial resolution and temporal frequency that are currently only available from the Landsat program. The continuation of the Landsat program will increase the data quantity available for analysis.”

— Jennifer Rover, USGS , Dec 14, 2015

“…Landsat products can be used—and are necessary—for quantifying and summarizing water use volumes at spatial scales that are relevant for water resource studies in water-limited regions.”

— Justin Huntington, Desert Research Institute hydrologist , Apr 30, 2024

“With its superhuman sight, and decades of archived imagery, Landsat provides us with the ability to see through time, to track the vegetal movement which is beyond our normal sight and to see it for what it really is: a titanic unfolding of active and intentional life.”

— James Bridle, writer and artist , Jun 1, 2022

“We basically built … Tinder for Landsat maps: Swipe right if it’s good, swipe left if it’s bad.”

— James Crawford, Orbital Insight CEO on his company's surface water detection app , Feb 25, 2016

“I don’t think people appreciate just how revolutionary it was when the Landsat archive became available for free and really empowered researchers and advocates to have access to that data at an affordable price to be able to do the kind of mapping that’s now been done, making visible what was previously invisible…”

— Frances Seymour, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development , Oct 2, 2018

“We got everything we asked for.”

— David Roy, Landsat Science Team co-lead and Interim Director of the Center for Global Change and Earth Observations at Michigan State University, describing the Landsat Next mission to fellow Landsat Science Team members , Feb 7, 2023

“The resolution of Landsat imagery and the size of the Landsat database enables critical insight for scalable, high resolution flood detection in several key ways… This increased resolution is particularly critical in urban areas.”

— Beth Tellman, Arizona State University and co-founder Cloud to Street, , Dec 12, 2016

“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.”

— Tanya Trujillo, Assistant Secretary for Water and Science, U.S. Department of the Interior , Jul 21, 2022

““When the first images appeared, people would talk about the folds in the Appalachian Mountains. There had been textbooks written that described the processes that lead to those formations. For the first time it was possible to observe from great height what people had been talking about for hundreds of years.”

— Dr. Jim Irons, Landsat 8 Project Scientist , Mar 1, 2014

“Over the past 50 years, eight Landsat satellites have circled the planet, which have helped to save and improve lives and support our economy. NASA will continue to work with USGS to improve access to Landsat’s unprecedented 50-year record and build on the program’s legacy.”

— Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator , Jul 21, 2022

“We have recognized for the first time that we’re not just going to do one more, then stop, but that Landsat is actually a long-term monitoring activity, like the weather satellites, that should go on in perpetuity.”

— Jeff Masek, Landsat 9 Project Scientist , Apr 16, 2015

“Landsat has been extremely beneficial as it allowed us to frequently evaluate the movement of the shoreline based on data gleaned from one consistent source over the duration of the study period. Further, the continued use of Landsat will allow for ongoing monitoring of the coastline in this region to ensure that potential infrastructural improvements are sustainable based on projections of near-term climate change.”

— Ravi Darwin Sankar, geologist, University of Calgary , Dec 12, 2016

“We’re power users of Landsat.”

— Daniel Irwin, SERVIR global program manager and research scientist at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama , Oct 26, 2021

“The Landsat program has given each and every one of us in every part of the world a thoroughly objective, continuous look at ourselves in the mirror since 1972.”

— Anne Castle, assistant secretary for water and science at the U.S. Department of the Interior , Jul 23, 2012

“The most unique thing about Landsat is its length of record… The ability to go back 30 years or more is something you just can’t do with any other sensor.”

— Andrew Elmore, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science , Dec 14, 2017

“Over the years, we’ve used the Landsat imagery to develop an incredibly accurate depiction of Earth and its changes over time, which we’ve published in Google Earth and Maps for use by billions of people worldwide.”

— Chris Herwig, Google Earth and Earth Engine , Jul 28, 2017

The Landsat program consists of a series of Earth-observing satellite missions jointly managed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Since 1972, Landsat satellites have continuously acquired images of the Earth’s land surface and provided an uninterrupted data archive to assist land managers, planners, and policymakers in making more informed decisions about natural resources and the environment.