Landsat 8 celebrates 5 years in space - Earth.com

Landsat 8 celebrates 5 years in space

02-13-2018

 Landsat 8 celebrates 5 years in space Today’s Video of the Day comes from NASA Goddard and features a look at the important information collected by the Landsat 8 satellite over the past 5 years.

Since its launch on February 11, 2013, Landsat 8 has made 26,500 orbits around Earth, captured 1.1 million scenes, and now represents 16 percent of the entire 45-year Landsat archive. It orbited Earth more than 150,000 times, capturing more than 2.5 million images of our world’s terrain. 

The satellite has captures images with higher resolution and faster data acquisition rates, which has improved water quality mapping, ice velocity detection, and tracking of crop health. Landsat 8 is the most recently launched Landsat satellite and carries the Operational Land Imager (OLI) and the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) instruments. Illustration of the Landsat 8 Satellite. After four decades of advancing technology, Landsat 8 now collects data almost continually around the globe. 

Newly acquired Landsat 7 and Landsat 8 scenes become available for download typically less than 12 hours after data acquisition. Landsat Collection 1 Level-1 scenes are available for download at no charge from EarthExplorer. They can be found under the Landsat category on the Data Set tab as shown in this image.  Landsat 8 celebrates 5 years in space Landsat Celebrates 40 Years of Observing Earth NASA An artist’s rendition of the next Landsat satellite, the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) that will launch in Feb. 2013. 

By Rory Arnold, Earth.com Staff Writer

Image Credit: NASA Goddard

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