Landsat Next Defined

Landsat Next Defined

June 29, 2023

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

June 29, 2023

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.

Read More »

“Satellite data is revolutionizing the way we map the world and the way we understand the natural and anthropogenic processes acting on Earth.”


— Rory Quinn, marine geoscientist, maritime archaeologist, and Landsat data user , Jul 18, 2016
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“You can acquire data until the cows come home. But if the data isn’t available, you can only go so far. If people can’t rely on data availability and continuity, they won’t build a system to use it. And then the whole puzzle falls apart.”


— Alyssa Whitcraft, program scientist at GEOGLAM , Oct 29, 2015
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“Landsat has been historically the gold standard reference for calibration of many different missions across the whole globe. The radiometric quality for Landsat Next will be at least as good as any previous Landsat. So, we will maintain that standard for calibration and referencing for all missions.”


— Jim Pontius, Landsat Next Project Manager, NASA , Jun 29, 2023
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“Landsat provides a global view of the the worlds alpine glaciers and enables us to track their retreat in ways that would be difficult without this important environmental time series.”


— Andrew Klein, Texas A & M University , Dec 14, 2016
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“With the full Landsat record available, we can finally look at really big problems, like the global carbon cycle.”


— Jeff Masek , Mar 26, 2015
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“The USGS Landsat Surface Reflectance products have revolutionized human-scale biophysical studies that require consistent and atmospherically corrected products.”


— Maciel et al., 2023 , Oct 31, 2023
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“The Landsat satellite program has provided images of the Earth’s surface for more than 40 years, and so it is ideal for documenting long-term changes in ecosystems such as giant kelp forests.”


— Kyle Cavanaugh, kelpwatch.org lead scientist; UCLA , Apr 4, 2022
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“The community was very vocal regarding the value of a free and open data policy.”


— Frank Avila, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and National Geospatial Advisory Committee member , Jun 12, 2019
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“The value of the Landsat archive is that we have a long-term memory of the changes that have occurred across the Amazon frontier.”


— Doug Morton, Chief of the Biospheric Sciences Lab at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center , Apr 19, 2021
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“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
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“[T]he case for open data is more than proven by Landsat and Copernicus. Many innovative applications using these datasets are the dividends that benefit the taxpayer.”


— Arup Dasgupta , Aug 5, 2019
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“The Landsat archive and other remote sensing systems provide the means to map and measure disturbance rates of the last 40 years.”


— Jeff Masek, Landsat 9 Project Scientist , Apr 27, 2018
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“With Landsat we can see temperature of individual fields and how it varies from field-to-field. The temperature of the land surface gives us a good indication of how rapidly water is evaporating off that surface. And this is really important for knowing how healthy the crops are and also for supplying information for irrigators: how much water was used last week and how much do they need to replenish in the current week to keep the crops healthy.”


— Martha Anderson, U.S. Department of Agriculture and Landsat Science Team member , Feb 5, 2018
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“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.”


— Kimbra Cutlip, SkyTruth , Oct 3, 2016
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“The Landsat program relative to agriculture monitoring has been profound. The whole idea that Landsat could look at the condition of crops, the acreage of crops, seeing how they evolve, diseases… it just has been tremendously impactful for agriculture.”


— Vince Salomonson; Professor Emeritus, University of Utah | Landsat Project Scientist, 1977–1989 , Dec 15, 2022
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“The issue of forest disturbance could not have been addressed without our analysis of Landsat Time-series Stacks”


— Charles Perry, USDA Forest Inventory and Analysis , Dec 14, 2015
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“Because Landsat’s been operating for so long—thermal imaging has been enabled since the 1980s—we can study how patterns in water use have changed over the landscape over long periods of time as the climate has changed and as land use patterns have changed. So Landsat has been really a critical sensor for our work.”


— Dr. Martha Anderson, USDA Researchers and Landsat Science Team Member , Apr 22, 2020
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“The quality of the Landsat 8 images is simply amazing!”


— Amaury Dehecq, NASA Jet Propulsion Lab , Dec 12, 2016
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“The really unique part about the Landsat record is the fact that it goes back to the ’70s. I can’t imagine what it would be like to describe what this volcano did without having a timeseries of Landsat. There is no other asset in the sky that can show us what Landsat does in terms of the effect of this eruption and also the effect of recovery following the eruption.”


— Sean Healey, research ecologist, Rocky Mountain Research Service, U.S. Forest Service , May 18, 2020
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“NASA’s comprehensive study of Earth has provided much of the underlying understanding of current trends in the planet’s climate – including definitive measurements of rising sea levels, glacier retreat, ice sheet changes and the decline in the volume of the Arctic sea ice cap. Our satellites have provided global, long-term views of plant life on land and in the ocean. And our supercomputing power is allowing us to better understand how all the parts of the Earth system work together and he…


— Charles Bolden, NASA Administrator , Dec 4, 2015
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“One of the most powerful capabilities we can offer is a continuous global view of our planet. Without the observations of land, precipitation, the atmosphere, and our oceans, we would be flying blind in terms of what trends have been and how we can improve of our models for the future.”


— Dalia Kirschbaum, Hydrological Sciences Lab Chief at NASA Goddard , Apr 22, 2022
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“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
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“With the Landsat satellite system capable of delivering global coverage every 8 days, we have an unprecedented ability to monitor global forest change. The 2014 tree cover loss data, incorporating hundreds of thousands of Landsat images, confirms that deforestation is not just high in certain countries, it’s speeding up. The next step is to use this information to improve forest protection and more equitably balance economic development with the invaluable ecosystem services forests provid…


— Matt Hansen, Professor of Geography, University of Maryland , Sep 2, 2015
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“Free and open access to the Landsat archive has already spurred scientific innovation and provided a foundation for REDD+ monitoring, reporting and verification.”


— Doug Morton, NASA Goddard , Apr 27, 2016
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ABOUT LANDSAT

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.