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About Landsat-8
Landsat-8 was launched on 11 February 2013 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California on an Atlas-V rocket. The satellite is part of the long-running Landsat programme led by USGS and NASA and carries the Operational Land Imager (OLI) and the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS).
Landsat-8 is part of ESA's Third Party Missions Programme, in which ESA has an agreement to distribute data products from the mission.
| Operators | NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), USGS (United States Geological Survey) |
| Launch Dates | 11 February 2013 |
| Orbit Height | 705 km |
| Orbit Type | Sun-synchronous near-polar |
| Orbit Period | 99 minutes |
| Inclination | 98.2 |
| Repeat Cycle | 16 days |
| Equatorial Crossing Time | 10:00 a.m. +/- 15 minutes |
| Onboard sensors provided under TPM | Operational Land Imager (OLI) and the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) |
Landsat-8 Objectives
Landsat-8 consists of three key mission and science objectives:
- Collect and archive medium resolution multispectral image data affording seasonal coverage of the global land mass
- Ensure that Landsat-8 data are sufficiently consistent with data from the earlier Landsat missions in terms of acquisition geometry, calibration, coverage characteristics, spectral characteristics, output product quality, and data availability
- Ensure products are available to download within three hours
Landsat-8 Instruments
Operational Land Imager (OLI)
The Operational Land Imager (OLI) provides two new spectral bands in respect to the Landsat-7 ETM+ instrument, one tailored especially for detecting cirrus clouds (band 9, new Near Infra-Red (NIR) band) and the other for coastal zone observations (band 1, new deep blue visible channel). It measures in the visible, NIR, and Shortwave Infra-Red (SWIR) portions of the electromagnetic spectrum and offers 15 metre panchromatic, and 30 metre multi-spectral spatial resolution. find out more
Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS)
The Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) was added to the Landsat-8 payload to continue thermal imaging and to support emerging applications such as evapotranspiration rate measurements for water management. TIRS was built by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and it has a three-year design life. The 100 m TIRS data is registered to the OLI data to create radiometrically, geometrically, and terrain-corrected 12-bit Landsat-8 data products.
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Landsat-8 Data
DATA COLLECTIONS
The following external collection is available for Landsat-8:
DATA QUALITY
Landsat-8 Quality Control Reports are available for OLI and TIRS in three different varieties covering quality monitoring, data unavailability any product anomalies.