Available Data Products

The USGS archive holds data collected by the Landsat suite of satellites, beginning with Landsat 1 in 1972. All Landsat scenes in the USGS EROS archive are available for download at no charge. The Search and Download page describes how to find Landsat data.

Current Acquisitions

Currently, both Landsat 8 and Landsat 7 collect data, each following a near-polar, sun-synchronous orbit on the Worldwide Reference System (WRS-2). Each satellite has a 16-day revisit cycle, and they have an 8-day offset. All acquired scenes are downlinked to the USGS Landsat Ground Station and made available for download with 24 hours of acquisition.

The Landsat Acquisition webpage provides daily capture schedules, acquisition calendars, and pending acquisition reports.

Landsat 8

The Landsat 8 satellite was launched on February 11, 2013, and carries two instruments: The Operational Land Imager (OLI) sensor and the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS). The satellite is adding over 500 scenes into the USGS archives each day.

Landsat 7

The Landsat 7 satellite collects about 300 scenes per day, even though acquisitions since May 31, 2003 are collected and archived as "SLC-off", due to the Scan Line Corrector failure. This failure caused data loss to approximately 22 percent of each scene. The scan line effects of SLC-off data are most pronounced along the edge of the scene and gradually diminish toward the center of the scene. Landsat 7 data acquired from April 1999 to May 2003 (SLC-on) provide complete full-scene data.

Processing Details

All currently acquired and most archived Landsat data is processed through Landsat Product Generation System (LPGS).

A small number of Landsat 4-5 Thematic Mapper (TM) scenes are processed using the National Land Archive Production System (NLAPS).

The Landsat Processing Details web page provides more information on the standard parameters used and levels of corrections applied to the data.

About

Landsat represents the world's longest continuously acquired collection of space-based moderate-resolution land remote sensing data. Four decades of imagery provides a unique resource for those who work in agriculture, geology, forestry, regional planning, education, mapping, and global change research. Landsat images are also invaluable for emergency response and disaster relief.