Open Science & Data

When the Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS) program was officially established by NASA in 1967, William T. Pecora, Project EROS pioneer and then Director of the USGS, firmly believed that the data from the future ERTS-1 (Landsat 1) satellite should be freely available. In 1969, Pecora stated “I believe strongly that the data must be freely available to the resources and scientific communities, on a timely basis; restricted use of the data is not in keeping with the traditions of our Department. This view is shared by our advisory committee in the Academy of Sciences as expressed in their strong recommendation for making the raw data from the satellites rapidly and freely available to the scientific and resources communities.”

While Pecora had this strong belief and recommendation, fees for acquiring ERTS-1 data were implemented when the satellite began returning images of the Earth in 1972. The initial fees were largely charged as a result of processing time and a lack of technological transfer. There were very few image processing programs, and the sizes of the images were considerable for the time. The majority of users were academic scientists and government agencies who had mainframe computers that were capable of processing the data. Those users likely also had funds to purchase images, as the price for one MSS image in 1979 was $200.

With the passage of the Land Remote Sensing Commercialization Act in 1984, the prices increased as a result of transferring Landsat operations to the private sector. The original intention for charging higher fees was to produce enough revenue from commercial imagery sales to support the continuation of the Landsat program. However, the financial obstacles associated with commercialization propelled costs to increase from $650 for one scene to $2,800, and up to $6,000, per scene. With this increase, the demand for imagery sharply declined.

When Congress passed the Land Remote Sensing Policy Act in 1992, the commercialization of the Landsat program eventually ended. In the Act, Congress determined that “the cost of Landsat data has impeded the use of such data for scientific purposes.” Therefore, it was decided that unenhanced Landsat 7 data should be made available to all users at the cost of fulfilling user requests. After Landsat 7 was successfully launched in April 1999, the USGS set the per-scene price of Landsat 7 data at $600, a cost that covered product generation and the distribution of unenhanced data. This reduction drove down commercial fees for Landsat 4 and Landsat 5 data.

As technological advances were made in computer processing and storage, the cost of handling Landsat data significantly decreased. With the development of the internet, data distribution became simpler. These innovations eventually allowed Pecora’s recommendation from 1969 to be realized. In January 2008, Barbara J. Ryan, then Associate Director for Geography at the USGS, and Michael H. Freilich, then Director of the Earth Sciences Division at NASA, signed the Landsat Data Distribution Policy which made Landsat images free to the public. Beginning in July 2008, newly acquired Landsat 7 images became available over the internet at no charge. By December 2008, all Landsat 7 data and Landsat 5 TM data became available, and by February 2009, the entire Landsat data archive became available for download. This unprecedented change was largely driven by Barbara Ryan. She worked for the USGS for more than three decades, and during her years as Associate Director of Geography, she strongly advocated public access to Earth observation data.