March 1, 2017 - Historic Landsat 5 launched 33 years ago today

By Landsat Missions

On March 1, 1984, Landsat 5 launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. Landsat 5 was designed and built at the same time as Landsat 4 and carried the Multispectral Scanner System (MSS) and the Thematic Mapper (TM) instruments.

At that time, nobody could have predicted that Landsat 5 - which had a design life of just 3 years - would complete over 150,000 Earth orbits, collect over 2.5 million images of Earth, and be operational for nearly 29 years. For this accomplishment, Landsat 5 was entered into the Guinness World Records for the 'Longest-operating Earth observation satellite'.

To read more about Landsat 5's service, legacy and decommissioning, visit the Landsat 5 History webpage. Landsat 5 MSS (1984-2013) and TM (1984-2012) data is available for download from EarthExplorer, GloVis, and the LandsatLook Viewer.