OSAM-1 Lead Systems Engineer Wendy Morgenstern discusses NASA’s On-orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing 1 mission to robotically refuel Landsat 7, a satellite that wasn’t designed to be serviced.
Learn more about the atmospheric transmission data used for our Landsat spectral band comparison graphic.
< The Multispectral Scanner System The band-average relative spectral radiance responses of the Landsat-1 through -5 Multispectral Scanner System (MSS) instruments are provided below
Every full moon, Landsat 8 turns its back on Earth. As the satellite’s orbit takes it to the nighttime side of the planet, Landsat 8 pivots to point at the moon. It scans the distant lunar surface multiple times, then flips back around to continue its task of collecting land-cover information of the sunny side of Earth below. These monthly lunar scans are key to ensuring the land-imaging instrument aboard Landsat 8 is detecting light consistently. For a well-known and stable source of light, nothing on our planet beats the moon, which lacks an atmosphere and has an unchanging surface, barring the odd meteorite.
To continually map the Earth’s surface using Landsat data, an entirely new projection had to be created. This new projection was created by John Parr Snyder and is known as the Space Oblique Mercator (SOM) projection. It is considered, “one of the most complex projections ever devised” according to cartographic historian, John W. Hessler.
The Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) measures land surface temperature in two thermal bands with a new technology that applies quantum physics to detect heat. TIRS
The Operational Land Imager (OLI), built by the Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation, measures in the visible, near infrared, and short wave infrared portions of
The Details Launch Date: February 11, 2013 Status: operational Sensors: OLI, TIRS Altitude: 705 km Inclination: 98.2° Orbit: polar, sun-synchronous Equatorial Crossing Time: nominally 10 AM (± 15 min.) local time (descending
On the beautifully clear Monday morning of Feb. 11, 2013, the Landsat Data Continuity Mission made its way from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base to
Mar. 19, 2013 • The great strength of Landsat is its ability to let data users look at and analyze changes to the Earth’s landscapes from
The Worldwide Reference System (WRS) is a global notation system for Landsat data. It enables a user to inquire about satellite imagery over any portion
The Thematic Mapper (TM) is an advanced, multispectral scanning, Earth resources sensor designed to achieve higher image resolution, sharper spectral separation, improved geometric fidelity and
MSS Relative Spectral Response > The Multispectral Scanner System (MSS) sensors were line scanning devices observing the Earth perpendicular to the orbital track. The
The Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) instrument is a fixed “whisk-broom”, eight-band, multispectral scanning radiometer capable of providing high-resolution imaging information of the Earth’s surface.
Landsat 6 was launched on Oct. 5, 1993 carrying the Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM) instrument. L6 did not achieve orbit. ETM Bands Band Number
The Details Launch Date: April 15, 1999 Status: operational despite Scan Line Corrector (SLC) failure May 31, 2003 Sensors: ETM+ Altitude: 705 km Inclination: 98.2° Orbit: polar, sun-synchronous Equatorial Crossing Time: nominally
The Details Launch Date: October 5, 1993 Status: lost at launch Sensor: ETM + read about the history of Landsat 6 More Technical Details Landsat 1 Landsat 2 Landsat
The Details Launch Date: March 1, 1984 Status: Decommissioned January 2013 Sensors: TM, MSS Altitude: 705 km Inclination: 98.2° Orbit: polar, sun-synchronous Equatorial Crossing Time: nominally 9:45 AM (± 15 min.) local
The Details Launch Date: July 16 , 1982 Status: decommissioned, June 15, 2001 Sensors: TM, MSS Altitude: 705 km Inclination: 98.2° Orbit: polar, sun-synchronous Equatorial Crossing Time: nominally 9:45 AM (± 15 min.)
The Details Launch Date: March 5, 1978 Status: put into standby mode: March 31, 1983; decommissioned: Sept. 7, 1983 Sensors: RBV, MSS Altitude: nominally 900 km Inclination: 99.2° Orbit: polar, sun-synchronous Equatorial
The Details Launch Date: January 22, 1975 Status: removed from operational status: February 5, 1982; decommissioned: July 27, 1983 Sensors: RBV, MSS Altitude: nominally 900 km Inclination: 99.2° Orbit: polar, sun-synchronous Equatorial
The Details Launch Date: July 23, 1972 Status: expired, January 6, 1978 Sensors: RBV, MSS Altitude: nominally 900 km Inclination: 99.2° Orbit: polar, sun-synchronous Equatorial Crossing Time: nominally 9:42 AM mean local time
Source: Jon Campbell and Tim Newman, U.S. Geological Survey Dec. 21, 2012 • Today the U.S. Geological Survey announced that Landsat 5 will be decommissioned over the
