February 25, 2019 - First in a Series of Landsat 9 Ground Readiness Tests Successful

By Landsat Missions

In mid-February, the Landsat 9 Ground System development team executed the first in a series of Ground Readiness Tests as they successfully simulated the communication of command and telemetry data between the Ground Network Element, located at the USGS EROS Center in Sioux Falls, SD, and the Landsat Multi-Satellite Operations Center at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD.

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In this first Ground Readiness Test (GRT), ground system engineers and operations team members used simulators to test the ability of the Landsat Multi-Satellite Operations Center (LMOC) and Ground Network Element (GNE) systems to talk with each other, communicating both simulated commands for actions by the spacecraft, but also retrieving and sharing with each other simulated telemetry data related to the health and safety of the satellite.

This successful GRT milestone is a significant accomplishment for the incremental delivery of the Landsat 9 GNE and helps maintain Landsat 9’s launch readiness date of December 2020.

Visit the Landsat 9 web page for all Landsat 9 mission details.