Program: Landsat (Civil)

Description:

• US civilian Earth imaging programs were developed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland (with the exception of some hand-held camera imaging on human spaceflight missions). The Vanguard 2 photocells in 1959 were followed by the Tiros weather satellites in 1960, returning weather imaging with a few km spatial resolution. Tiros was the operational weather satellite system; NASA-Goddard's Nimbus satellites, built by General Electric/Valley Forge, were the research-and-development system testing out advanced sensors (Nimbus 3 had 1.6km visible resolution and multiple infrared channels).
  Meanwhile, secret NRO satellites were returing imagery with sub-meter resolution.
• A drive in the late 1960s towards practical applications of space technology and an increased awareness of ecological issues led to the first moderately-high resolution civilian imaging program, the Earth Resources Technology Satellite. ERTS was based on GE's Nimbus satellite bus. ERTS 1's three-channel vidicon camera and 4-channel visible/near-IR multispectral scanner had a resolution of 80 meters. It was the first civilian imaging satellite to be targeted on ground features - crop monitoring, geological surveys, mapping - rather than meteorology. Following the launch of ERTS 2 in 1975, ERTS was renamed Landsat.
  Landsat 4 and 5 switched to the multi-mission bus also used for Solar Max and EUVE; Landsat 6 and 7 used a derivative of the Tiros-N bus used for NOAA and USAF polar weather satellites.
• Unsuccessful attempts to commercialize Landsat in the 1990s led first to the system's transfer to the NOAA weather bureau (in 1983) and then to the formation of EOSAT (later Space Imaging), which took over operations of Landsat 4 and Landsat 5 in 1985 (ownership remained with NOAA until 1998, when the US Geological Survey took over). In 2001 these satellites were returned to USGS while Landsat 7, with 15-meter resolution, was developed by GSFC and turned over to USGS for operations. The Landsat Data Continuity Mission is scheduled for launch in early 2013.

   ERTS/Landsat satellites
   -----------------------

Prelaunch    Postlaunch    Type      Mass/kg  Launch date        End of life date
  Name          Name
 ERTS A       ERTS 1       Nimbus      891    1972 Jul 23        1978 Jan 26
 ERTS B       Landsat 2    Nimbus      953    1975 Jan 22        1983 Jul 27
 Landsat C    Landsat 3    Nimbus      900    1978 Mar  5        1983 Sep  7
 Landsat D    Landsat 4    MMS        1938    1982 Jul 16        2001 Jun 15
 Landsat D'   Landsat 5    MMS        1938    1984 Mar  1        -
 Landsat 6    Landsat 6    Tiros-N    1866    1993 Oct  5        1993 Oct  5  (launch failure)
 Landsat 7    Landsat 7    Tiros-N    2101    1999 Apr 15        -
 LDCM         -            Leostar-3  3085    2013 (planned)

Landsat 1 series

---

Landsat 2 series

---

Landsat 3 series

---

External resources