NASA and USGS will evaluate EarthDaily Constellation data against Landsat standards and requirements.
EarthDaily has been awarded a $4.3 million (US$3 million) task order by NASA to provide EarthDaily Constellation data and technical support for NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to evaluate new approaches for incorporating commercial capabilities into government land imaging programs, such as Landsat.
The order supports the Sustainable Land Imaging commercial transition initiative, a joint NASA-USGS effort examining how commercial Earth observation data can complement government systems while meeting the scientific quality and continuity needs of the Landsat record.
Under the contract, NASA and USGS will evaluate EarthDaily Constellation data against Landsat standards and requirements, including data quality, calibration, stability, radiometric and geometric performance, harmonisability, and fitness for purpose.
The work will also examine how commercial observations can support the development of AI-ready Earth observation products designed for modern data processing and machine-learning workflows.
“Landsat has created an extraordinary scientific record of how our planet is changing, built on decades of consistent and trusted measurement,” said Don Osborne, Chief Executive Officer of EarthDaily.
“EarthDaily was built around the same fundamental idea: to understand change, you first need measurements you can trust and compare over time. As Earth observation increasingly becomes an input to AI, that consistency becomes even more important.
“This work gives us the opportunity to collaborate with NASA and USGS to demonstrate how science-grade, AI-ready commercial observations can complement the Landsat record and help extend trusted measurement into the future.”
Data evaluation and validation
Eight of EarthDaily’s 10 satellites are now in orbit, covering 100% of Earth’s landmass every two days. At full operations the constellation will image about 92% of Earth’s landmass every day, excluding Antarctica.
A sun-synchronous orbit supports consistent morning acquisitions, with equatorial crossing times of around 10:30am local time, while a 240 km swath enables systematic coverage across large areas.
Its coordinated imaging systems collect data across 22 spectral bands spanning visible, near-infrared, short-wave infrared, and thermal wavelengths, using sensor technologies suited to each part of the spectrum. Native spatial resolution is 5 m in the visible and near-infrared, 95 m in the short-wave infrared and 120 m in the thermal infrared, with no sharpening applied to create apparent detail.
EarthDaily will work with NASA and USGS on experiments involving data evaluation, workflow demonstration, product evaluation and validation, standardised data structures, and uncertainty characterisation.
The work will also test EarthDaily data alongside Landsat and other reference missions and within USGS Analysis Ready Data and NASA Harmonised Landsat and Sentinel-2 processing workflows.
The evaluation will examine whether EarthDaily data can support Landsat-grade surface reflectance and surface temperature.
It will also assess compatibility with long-term land imaging records and the potential for commercial observations to increase revisit frequency and improve spatial resolution when combined with government Earth observation systems.
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