Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Landsat Processing Systems

By Landsat Missions

Landsat Level-1 data products are produced by the Landsat Product Generation System (LPGS). LPGS also generates the 16-bit Quality Assessment Band (QA) and an angle coefficient file that are included in the Level-1 product, as well as a Full Resolution Browse (FRB) and an 8-bit Quality Image. The system then delivers the data products and images to the online cache for distribution. 

Landsat Product Generation System (LPGS)

Landsat Product Generation System (LPGS) produces data products using standard parameters. Data are produced using the best available processing level for each particular scene. 

Data Exempt from LPGS Processing (NLAPS)

Some Landsat 4-5 Thematic Mapper (TM) data acquired between 1984 and 1989 cannot be processed by LPGS and added to the Collection 1 Level-1 dataset. Instead, these scenes were processed by the National Land Archive Production System (NLAPS), which was the original Landsat processing system prior to implementing LPGS when Landsat 7 data became available in 1999. 

Information about data processed using NLAPS, along with comparisons to LPGS-processed data is provided on National Land Archive Production System.