The NASA Agency Management Council confirmed that the Landsat Data Continuity Mission is ready to proceed to the final design and fabrication phase of mission development following a Dec. 16, 2009 review at NASA HQ. The confirmed LDCM payload now includes a a thermal sensor, the Thermal InfraRed Sensor (TIRS), in addition to the Operational Land Imager (OLI) with development managed towards a target Dec. 2012 launch date.