OLI-2 is being built by Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colorado. It will capture observations of the planet in visible, near infrared and shortwave-infrared light.
Here are some photos that Ball Aerospace recently shared of its technicians working on OLI-2 in the cleanroom during focal plane integration. (The focal plane is where the instrument’s detectors are found and where the radiances to be measured are incident.)
⬆ Ball Aerospace technicians prepare to install the focal plane assembly, a 14-module detector array, into the Operational Land Imager 2, one of the key science instruments for Landsat 9.
The Operational Land Imager 2 employs a ‘push-broom’ scanning method, a significant advancement in Landsat sensor technology that provides improved land surface information with fewer moving parts than older ‘sweeping’ method sensors.
⬆ A Ball Aerospace technician inspects the Operational Land Imager 2 for Landsat 9 during the integration of the instrument’s focal plane assembly. Ball Aerospace designed and built the first OLI instrument for Landsat 8, which launched in 2013.
The Operational Land Imager 2 will provide 15-meter panchromatic and 30-meter multi-spectral spatial resolutions along a 185-kilometer-wide swath, allowing Landsat 9 to image the entire globe every 16 days.
⬆ At Ball Aerospace, a technician completes integration of the focal plane assembly, a key component of the Operational Land Imager 2 instrument, which will launch on Landsat 9 in December 2020.
+ More information about the Landsat 9 instruments
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