Landsat and LDCM Headlines 2008

USGS is providing Landsat satellite imagery to aid rescue and recovery efforts in Myanmar in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis’s landfall on May 3. International emergency response teams are using the Landsat images to assess the extent of flood damage caused by the cyclone in the affected region. Read the News Release - .pdf (479 KB)

This week, the U.S. House of Representatives honored the Landsat missions by entering a resolution that expressed appreciation to all contributing scientists, engineers, and program personnel for the first 35 years of the Landsat program and urged continuation of the Landsat program for another 35 years. For details of the resolution, please see H. Res. 891. .pdf (27.1 KB)

By February 2009, any Landsat archive scene selected by a user will be processed, at no charge, automatically to a standard product recipe and staged for electronic retrieval. In addition, newly acquired scenes meeting a cloud cover threshold of 20% or below will be processed to the standard recipe and placed on line for at least three months, after which they will remain available for selection from the archive. Details can be found in the USGS Technical Announcement - .pdf (66.8 KB).

As Landsat 7 acquires clear scenes over Africa (less than or equal to 20 percent cloud cover), the Landsat Project is automatically processing those scenes to an L1T, applying precision ground control and the SRTM DEM for geometric correction. These scenes are accurate to within 30m. There are four areas of the continent that are still under investigation due to poor geometric adjustments (Nile region, two areas in southern Africa, Madagascar). These will be reprocessed and come online in late May.

Scenes can be found:

GloVis: glovis.usgs.gov, Collection->Landsat Science->Standard L1T

EE: earthexplorer.usgs.gov, under 1. Select your dataset, choose Landsat Science->SLC-off L1T Std L1T

The 17th Landsat Technical Working Group (LTWG) meeting, organized and hosted by the USGS, was held in Chantilly, Virginia, March 3–7, 2008. International Cooperator (IC) representatives from nine countries and members of the USGS Landsat Project, USGS Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) Project, NASA LDCM Project, and NASA Landsat Science Office discussed topics of technical interest. This transitional meeting focused on shifting away from the on-orbit Landsat 5 and 7 missions and toward the LDCM currently under development. A full range of presentations on the LDCM were included in the agenda, and several of the LDCM management and development team members attended to meet the IC representatives. Another transition was in the leadership of the LTWG and Landsat Ground Station Operators Working Group (LGSOWG) meetings—from the Landsat Project to the LDCM Project. In addition to the LDCM presentations, other topics covered were the Landsat 5 battery anomaly, the Landsat Pilot Project enabling no-charge data access, the Global Land Survey 2005, data validation and exchange, and the new Landsat 5 calibration parameter files. Also, a USGS Headquarters representative reported on the National Land Imaging Program.

Station reports were focused on addressing a variety of technical issues currently being worked by the Projects. Status reports were given on the China Brazil Earth Resources Satellite 2B (CBERS-2B) program by the Brazil representative, on the Thailand Earth Observation System (THEOS) program by the Thailand delegation, on TerraSAR-X by the German representative, and on the Sentinel program by the representative from the European Space Agency (ESA).

Figure 1. Group picture at Lincoln Memorial

Figure 2. Group picture at Capitol

Call for Nominations for 2008 William T. Pecora Award

Deadline: April 30, 2008

The William T. Pecora Award is presented annually to individuals or groups that have made outstanding contributions toward understanding the Earth by means of remote sensing. The Department of the Interior (DOI) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) jointly sponsor the award. The award was established in 1974 to honor the memory of Dr. William T. Pecora, former Director of the U.S. Geological Survey and Under Secretary, Department of the Interior. Dr. Pecora was a motivating force behind the establishment of a program for civil remote sensing of the Earth from space. His early vision and support helped establish what we know today as the Landsat satellite program.

The Award Committee must receive nominations for the 2008 award by April 30, 2008. Instructions for preparing a nomination and other information about the award can be found on the Pecora Award web site: http://remotesensing.usgs.gov/pecora.html

Any individual or group working in the field of remote sensing of the Earth is eligible to receive the William T. Pecora Award. An individual award recognizes achievements in the scientific and technical remote sensing community, as well as contributions leading to successful practical applications of remote sensing. Consideration will be given to sustained career achievements or singular contributions of major importance to the field of remote sensing. A group award recognizes a team or part of an organization that has made major breakthroughs in remote sensing science or technology, or developed an innovative application that has a significant impact on the user community or national and international policies. Individual and group achievements should be documented in the open literature.

Orbiter's Designed Three-Year Mission, Begins its 24th Year in Operation March 1

The earth imaging satellite Landsat 5 is once again collecting and downlinking land-image data. The satellite was temporarily taken out of service in October 2007 following a cell failure within one of the satellite's two operating on-board batteries.

USGS Flight Operations Team engineers were forced to discover ways to balance the energy demand of Landsat 5's operational and imaging instrumentation with the satellite's slightly diminished energy storage capacity. The Team's solution was to reconfigure and align Landsat 5's image acquisition schedule and to rely more on direct power from its solar array. Additionally, schedule changes were made to limit imaging during the winter months and to resume all routine imaging over the continental U.S. from March through September. Some concessions will also be made to limit imaging over international sites.

Restoration of Landsat 5's image data collection and data transfer capability is considered essential by many federal, state and local government and civilian land and resource agency managers in managing response to wildfires, floods, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes and other disasters. Since its launch on March 1, 1984, Landsat 5 has provided more than 600,000 individual images, recording clear-cutting and recovery conditions of rain forests, near- and long-term effects of the Chernobyl explosion, before-and-after records of Hurricane Katrina's impact, as well as more subtle natural and human-induced changes to the global land surface. In addition to these emergency and management applications of Landsat imagery, millions of people each day use web based mapping products supported by this and other imagery data to get where they want to go.

While the design life of Landsat 5 was only 3 years, this remarkable satellite is likely to produce imagery for a few more years. Landsat 7, launched in 1999, continues to provide the global science community with worldwide seasonal images, however, it too is operating in a slightly diminished capacity.

In an effort to ensure the continuation and improvement of global and National land imaging products and services to its users beyond the life of Landsat 5 and Landsat 7, the President recently announced a new budget initiative to create the National Land Imaging Program (NLIP) in the Department of the Interior.

NLIP planning is underway and will be designed to ensure the continuing operational and research needs for moderate resolution and multispectral land imaging products and services are met and provided to federal and civilian users.

NLIP will be responsible for the deployment and operation of future U.S.-owned, civil operational land imaging satellites and ground system assets and will be directed to facilitate the development and promotion of future land imaging technologies, applications and services to support the growing number of users.

Real-time and recent U.S. images collected by Landsats 5 and 7 are available for viewing on the USGS EarthNow! website, and archive images from both satellites can be previewed and ordered at EarthExplorer or at the USGS Global Visualization Viewer.

USGS press release: http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1881

The USGS is pleased to announce that Landsat 5 tested imaging with the Thematic Mapper on January 10, 2008 during a pass over Brazil and Argentina.

Landsat 5 imaging was suspended on October 6, 2007 due to a loss of a cell within one of two batteries. The Landsat Flight Operations Team has determined the status of the power system and potential solutions for maximum imaging operations. We are still in a testing phase, as the new battery configuration is being characterized. Experts in Thematic Mapper data have determined that the sensor is operating normally. We expect to return to a new operational state in upcoming weeks.

The Landsat Data Policy document establishes Landsat Program Management Policy for distributing products derived from Landsat data collected by the U.S. since 1972. This Policy supersedes all previous Landsat data policies. View Entire document - .pdf (232 bytes)