![]() ![]() “The USGS collection data allow the science, government, civil, and international user communities to map wildfires, primary and secondary contributions to greenhouse gas emissions, ice cover persistence, melt, water clarity, water quality, floating algae biomass, landcover that’s changed, and also urban growth and the heat island effects on local and regional temperature,” said USGS Project Scientist Chris Crawford. Like its predecessors, Landsat 9 is a joint effort of NASA and the U.S. Its instruments collect images of Earth’s landscapes in visible, near and shortwave (reflected) infrared, and thermal infrared wavelengths. Each pixel in these images is 30 meters across, or about the size of a baseball infield, which allows resource managers to resolve most crop fields in the United States. “Landsat is our best source for understanding rates of tropical deforestation, as well as other forest dynamics like disturbances from hurricanes, wildfires, insect outbreaks, as well as the recovery of those disturbances over time.”Īs Landsat 9 orbits Earth, it captures scenes across a swath 185 kilometers (115) miles wide. “We have over 2,000 peer-reviewed publications every year in the scientific literature that depend on the Landsat archive,” Masek said. NASA Landsat 9 Project Scientist Jeff Masek poses for a photograph by the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket with the Landsat 9 satellite at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Landsat’s medium-resolution imaging capability allows researchers to harmonize the images to detect the footprint of human activities and their impact on our home planet over the decades. Images from Landsat 9 will be added to nearly 50 years of free and publicly available data from the mission – the longest data record of Earth’s landscapes taken from space. ![]() ![]() “Landsat provides one basic set of observations that feeds an entire range of Earth science applications and research,” said NASA Landsat 9 Project Scientist Jeff Masek. This calibrated data will continue the Landsat program’s critical role in monitoring the health of Earth and helping people manage essential resources, including crops, irrigation water, and forests. Landsat 9 and Landsat 8 will collect images from across the planet every eight days. 27, the satellite now joins Landsat 8 in orbit and replaces Landsat 7, launched in 1999. Photo Credit: NASA/Bill IngallsĪfter a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket successfully carried the Landsat 9 spacecraft into orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Sept. Geological Survey mission that continues the legacy of monitoring Earth’s land and coastal regions, lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force on Monday, Sept. The Landsat 9 satellite, a joint NASA/U.S. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |