Landsat Missions
Question:
What is the orbit path of Landsats 7 and 5?
Answer:
Landsats 7 and 5 both follow a near-polar, sun-synchronous orbit. A complete orbit takes ~99 minutes, allowing the spacecraft to achieve over 14 orbits per day. Complete orbits around the Earth are accomplished every 16 days on the World Reference System (WRS-2) there is a temporal offset of 8 days between the satellites. The descending (daytime) node from north to south crosses the equator between 10:00 and 10:15 am (local time) on each pass to provide maximum illumination with minimum water vapor (haze and cloud build-up). Chapter 5 of the Landsat 7 Science Data Users Handbook gives further details on the orbit of Landsat 7.
U.S. Department of the Interior |
U.S. Geological Survey
URL: http://landsat.usgs.gov
Page Contact Information: landsat@usgs.gov
Page Last Modified: November 24, 2009
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