This natural colour image of the San Francisco Bay was captured by Landsat 9’s new Operational Land Imager 2 instrument. Image credit: NASA/USGS Landsat
The Landsat 9 remote sensing satellite has passed its post-launch assessment review and is now in its operational phase.
The satellite, a joint mission of NASA and the US Geological Survey (USGS), launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on September 27, 2021.
“The imagery from Landsat 9 is fantastic,” said Del Jenstrom, Landsat 9 project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
“I am incredibly proud of our joint agency and contractor team for executing a very thorough and highly successful on-orbit commissioning campaign, bringing this important mission into operational status.”
One of the commissioning activities was flying Landsat 9 at an orbit below its sister satellite, Landsat 8, imaging the same swath of land at essentially the same time, which allowed the team to confirm that the radiometry and geometry of the data align as expected.
The team also calibrated the instruments through a variety of methods, including tilting Landsat 9’s spacecraft to image the full Moon — a steady source of light to ensure the instruments are detecting light consistently.
That test also confirmed that the Thermal Infrared Sensor 2 instrument, or TIRS-2, on the new satellite doesn’t have the stray light problems that affected the first version of the instrument on Landsat 8. This will enable researchers to take more accurate surface temperature measurements, said Jeff Masek, NASA’s Landsat 9 project scientist.
Masek said TIRS-2 and Landsat 9’s other instrument, the Operational Land Imager 2, or OLI-2, are both performing as hoped.
This means that, with both Landsat 9 and Landsat 8 in orbit, there will be high-quality, medium-resolution images every eight days.
Masek said he’s looking forward to seeing what people do with the new data of Earth’s landscapes and coastal regions.
“The Landsat user base is eager to get another observatory that will double the frequency with which they can get this high-quality data,” Masek said. “This is really going to benefit research in areas like snow cover, crop monitoring and water quality.”
NASA led the commissioning campaign and will soon transfer operational control of the two Landsat 9 instruments to the USGS, which will distribute and archive the data.
Command of the spacecraft itself and mission will be handed over to USGS in May, after the team finishes a software update that will resolve a radiation susceptibility issue that the team identified during checkout of the data recorders.
Mitigation measures proved successful, and the software update will ensure those measures continue in automated fashion.
“Landsat 9 is distinctive among Earth observation missions because it carries the honour to extend the 50-year Landsat observational record into the next 50 years,” said Dr. Chris Crawford, USGS Landsat 9 Project Scientist.
“Landsat 9 enhances the spatial resolution, spectral continuity, and coincidental acquisition of reflected and emitted thermal infrared image data of Landsats 1-8. Landsat 9 ensures continued 8-day global land and near-shore revisit coverage partnered with Landsat 8 in orbit.”
USGS plans to start releasing Landsat 9 data to the public in mid-February.
Stay up to date by getting stories like this delivered to your inbox.
Sign up to receive our free weekly Spatial Source newsletter.
