The data from the Landsat Data Continuity Mission will be the best data
that have ever been collected from a Landsat satellite. With the increasing
population, our land use are changing at a rates unprecedented in human history.
To manage and cope with these changes we need to have the observations the
information the data that allow us to understand what's going on on the
surface the Earth where most of us live. Landsats been monitoring the surface of
the Earth since 1972. Tracking resources like farms, forests and water and
checking every continent, every season every year. Well we don't call it the
Data Continuity Mission for nothing. The continuity of those observations is
a really critical part of the ability to do the science we do on how climate
change and how land use are transforming our planet. The Landsat program and the
duration of the Landsat time series is the only record we have of these
fundamental changes in land cover. including melting glaciers, including the
loss of tropical forests, including the transformation from from small-scale
family agriculture to large agribusiness. After launch
LDCM will become known as Landsat eight. Since it's the eighth in the Landsat
program. A partnership between NASA and the US Geological Survey. NASA is
responsible for building and launching the satellite and the Geological Survey
is in charge of operations and receiving and archiving the data.
LDCM carries two instruments each covering a different part of the
electromagnetic spectrum. The OLI instrument monitors the Earth's surface
in spectral wavelengths that you and I can see and that's the visible
wavelengths and also in just into the infrared regions the near infrared and
shortwave infrared regions. The Operational Land Imager is used to track
urban sprawl, forest loss and regrowth, changes in farmland and the melting of
glaciers. The Thermal Infrared Sensor Instrument TIRS monitors the Earth in
thermal bands which are actually images temperature on the Earth's surface.
With TIRS scientists are able to track how much water is used by crops on
individual farm fields. And the new technology used in LDCM means that both
TIRS and OLI will be much more sensitive than previous Landsat sensors.
The greatest improvement we've made in the LDCM satellite is that the sensors
are what's called push broom sensors and not what was called whisk-broom sensors.
Push broom sensors have thousands of detectors that just image the Earth as
the satellite passes over the surface of the Earth. The older Landsat satellites
Landsat 7, Landsat 5 use a whisk broom technology which is many fewer detectors
scanning back and forth with a mechanical scanner. The advantage the
push broom is each detector has a longer time to dwell on each picture element or pixel
on the surface the Earth. As a consequence it creates a sensor with a
much higher sensitivity expressed a signal noise ratio. T-minus five-four
three-two-one and lift off
The LDCM Observatory launches out of the Vandenburg Air Force Base in
California. And launches into what's called a polar orbit and so it it orbits
over the North and South Poles taking imagery on the sunlit side of the Earth
every time it passes. It takes about a hundred minutes to loop around the poles.
LDCM will make 14 orbits each day and cover the whole globe every 16 days.
Every time they pass over the US, Landsat satellites beam data to the USGS Earth
resources observation and Science Center or EROS in South Dakota one of several
receiving stations around the world. This Center operates the Landsat archive that
contains all the U.S. held data from all of the Landsat satellites and the LDCM
data will become part of that archive. All of the data in the Landsat archive
at arrows can be obtained by anyone at no cost.
This freely available data has led to an incredible blossoming of science
research and applications. My favorite part of the Landsat program is the
opportunity to think big with free and open access to data around the world.
We're not limited as we once were and our ability to conceive of and analyze
large data sets to look at really large-scale changes and four continents
over the globe.
(Music)