“We need to drive towards building sustainable cities and human settlements, and this depends on how well we measure these areas and how well we can predict the growth in all these cities in the future. I believe Earth observation and geospatial technologies give us the tools needed in order for us to grow in this direction.”

“The first year we made Landsat open, we put out 25,000 Landsat scenes. Today, we put out millions of scenes a year.”

“Until recently the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has relied on very high spatial resolution imagery to assess environmental conditions that may pose threats to national security. This project has demonstrated the beneficial use of Landsat to assess water quality at a regional scale, which enables a broader understanding of changing environmental conditions.”

“A growing archive of Landsat images allow us to see how quickly icesheets are changing.”

“We wouldn’t be where we are today without Landsat paving the way.”

“Landsat’s work is epic in scale. In 43 years, it has amassed over a petabyte of data, with over 4 million scenes and counting.”

“A sizable portion of our greenhouse gas contribution to the atmosphere comes from land use. And having Landsat data to look back to the 1970s, from there to now, you can then calculate or approximate year-by-year what that contribution is, and that’s extremely important.”

“As the global population surpasses eight billion people, it will be important to effectively manage land to sustain life on Earth. Landsat 9 will pair with Landsat 8 to greatly improve our understanding of what is driving changes to our lands, surface waters, and coasts, and how we can sustainably manage it.”