Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

November 10, 2020 - Landsat 8 Data from Safehold Available in Provisional State

On Sunday, November 1, 2020 (DOY 306), a spacecraft anomaly caused Landsat 8 to enter into safehold.  In the past week, the Landsat 8 Flight Operations Team has successfully restored the Operational Land Imager (OLI) and the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) instruments to their optimal temperature, and the spacecraft has resumed nominal on-orbit operations and ground station processing.

Return to all Landsat Headlines

 

Landsat 8 image showing southwest Morocco
Landsat 8 image acquired on November 11, 2020 over southwest Morocco (Path 203 Row 40). The image is shown using the shortwave infrared 2, red, and blue bands (bands 7,4,2).

Landsat 8 Real-Time (RT) products acquired from November 4, 2020 (DOY 309) to present are available for download but remain provisional. Please note that most of these scenes contain OLI data only; while TIRS bands may be present, these bands have been temporarily set to a zero fill value while the Cal/Val team finalizes the post-safehold thermal calibration.

In approximately one week, all Landsat 8 acquisitions from the point of resuming nominal operations after the spacecraft entered into safehold, will be reprocessed with all necessary and typical calibration updates.  

Users who download provisional Landsat 8 RT data during this time should monitor subsequent updates from the USGS Landsat program. These provisional products will be reprocessed once calibration and validation engineering and assessment have been completed. 

Another status will be provided once the Landsat 8 provisional data reprocessing timeline has been determined.