Landsat-8 - Earth Online

Featured

Commercial and international data for fire monitoring

As climate change sparks a surge in the frequency and intensity of wildfires, satellite data disseminated through ESA’s Third Party Missions (TPM) programme are helping scientists to track and investigate these potentially damaging natural events.

Meet the Quality Assurance for EO Team

The Quality Assurance For Earth Observation (also known as QA4EO) Service began its operations on 1 November 2019, providing support to the Data Quality and Algorithms Management Office at ESRIN, within the Sensor Performance, Processing and Algorithm section.

ESA missions help to reveal worldwide lake water loss trend

Climate change, human consumption and sedimentation are depleting more than half of the world’s biggest lakes of water, according to a ground-breaking analysis that drew on three decades of satellite data.

How satellite data empower sustainable urban growth

Earth observation is a vital tool for facilitating the sustainable development of the world's cities, helping to ensure that urban centres keep spurring collaboration, innovation and opportunity as they continue to expand.

How scientists use space data to help advance the energy transition

Scientists are using remote sensing data disseminated by ESA to support the green transformation of world’s power generation infrastructure.

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.

*Landsat-8 Parameters*
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

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

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. find out more

Landsat-8 Data

DATA DESCRIPTION

ESA offers to registered users the access through the Landsat-8 portal to the following data collections:

Landsat-8 Collection 2 European Coverage

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.

Landsat-8 INSTRUMENTS

Landsat-8 DATA