Landsat 8

Spacecraft nº:

US spacecraft nº:

Launch data: Designation  39084 / 13008A Launch date  11 Feb 2013 - 18:02 UT (10:02 a.m. local time, 1:02 p.m. EST) Launch site  Va, SLC-3E Launch vehicle  Atlas-5/401 (AV-035) Mission  Gov.: Earth Science, Imaging Sun-synchronous LEO Earth orbit: Perigee / Apogee  700 x 705 km Eccentricity  3,53E-04 Inclination  98.2 deg Period  98.8 min

Spacecraft data: Prime manufacturer  Orbital Sciences Corporation (OSC) (formerly General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems) (bus); Ball Aerospace (payload) Platform  SA-200HP / LEOStar-3 Operator  NASA/US Geological Survey Mass at launch  2787 kg (including 395 kg propellant) Dry Mass  1512 kg Basic shape   Dimension (m)   Equipment  OLI, TIRS Solar array  Deployable solar array Stabilization   Propulsion   DC power  4300 W Design lifetime  7 yrs -still active The Landsat spacecraft during encapsulation. Credit: NASA

Description:

• The most recent, Landsat 7, was launched in April 1999 and continues to collect data. Because its design lifetime is five years, efforts to implement LDCM have been ongoing to minimize risks to data continuity. Early plans called for NASA to purchase data meeting LDCM specifications from a privately owned and commercially operated satellite system. However, after an evaluation of proposals received from private industry, NASA cancelled the Request-for-Proposals (RFP) in Sept. 2003.
• In light of the RFP cancellation, an interagency working group was formed (by the Executive Office of the President) to discuss new plans for Landsat data continuity. These discussions eventually lead to the Aug. 13, 2004 OSTP memorandum which directed federal agencies to place Landsat-type sensors on National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) platforms.
• The Operational Land Imager (OLI) is being built by the Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation. The Ball contract was awarded in July 2007. OLI improves on past Landsat sensors using a technical approach demonstrated by a sensor flown on NASA's experimental EO-1 satellite. OLI is a push-broom sensor with a four-mirror telescope and 12-bit quantization. OLI will collect data for visible, near infrared, and short wave infrared spectral bands as well as a panchromatic band. It has a five-year design life. The graphic below compares the OLI spectral bands to Landsat 7's ETM+ bands.
• The Thermal InfraRed Sensor (TIRS) was added to the LDCM payload to continue thermal imaging and to support emerging applications such as evapotranspiration rate measurements for water management. TIRS is being built by NASA GSFC and it has a three-year design life. The 100 m TIRS data will be registered to the OLI data to create radiometrically, geometrically, and terrain-corrected 12-bit LDCM data products.
• The Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM), a collaboration between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey, will provide moderate-resolution (15 m–100 m, depending on spectral frequency) measurements of the Earth's terrestrial and polar regions in the visible, near-infrared, short wave infrared, and thermal infrared. LDCM will provide continuity with the 40-year long Landsat land imaging data set. In addition to widespread routine use for land use planning and monitoring on regional to local scales, support of disaster response and evaluations, and water use monitoring, LDCM measurements directly serve NASA research in the focus areas of climate, carbon cycle, ecosystems, water cycle, biogeochemistry, and Earth surface/interior.
• The USGS is partnering with NASA on the LDCM project, which will be renamed Landsat 8 once in its polar orbit.
  "LDCM will deliver more data per day than any of the previous Landsat missions," said David Jarrett, the LDCM program executive at NASA Headquarters.
• The data will be streaming back from the 6,000-pound craft's two instruments: the Operational Land Imager and the Thermal Infrared Sensor.
  The OLI will take visible, near infrared and shortwave infrared pictures of the Earth's surface and coastal waters across the globe. TIRS will measure the temperature of the planet's surface.
  The information will be applied to environmental health, agriculture monitoring and water consumption, energy management, urban planning and disaster recovery.
• Replacement for Landsat 5.

Mission details:

• The Landsat Data Continuity Mission, Landsat 8, was launched from Vandenberg on Feb 11, 2013 into a 660 x 677 km x 98.3 deg, 1010LT sun-synchronous orbit. Landsat 8 carries the OLI (Operational Land Imager) and TIRS (Thermal Infrared Sensor) cameras. The satellite was built by Orbital Sciences' Gilbert, Arizona plant using the Leostar-3 (former Spectrum Astro SA-200HP) bus and is 2787 kg at launch including 395 kg of hydrazine propellant. The mission is controlled from NASA-Goddard with payload operations by the US Geological Survey. It was NASA's first use of the Atlas 5 from the California launch site.
• After separation from Landsat, the AV-035 Centaur upper stage was then placed in heliocentric orbit. The Earth escape trajectory had a perigee of 689 km and eccentricity of 1.16 corresponding to a C3 of 9.02 km**2/s**2.

Satellite tracking: