What is Landsat 7?
Detailed Description
In 1992, The U.S. Congress authorized the procurement, launch, and operation of a new Landsat satellite. This new system, Landsat 7, was launched in April 1999. It is the latest in a series of Earth observations satellites dating back to 1972. The 30-year record of data acquired by the Landsat satellites constitutes the longest continuous record of the Earth's continental surfaces.
More information about Landsat 7 Mission.
Details
Sources/Usage
Public Domain.
Transcript
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Welcome to CoreFacts, where we're always short on time and big on science. I'm Steve Sobieszczyk. Let's get right to it, today's question is:
What is the Landsat 7?
In 1992, The U.S. Congress authorized the procurement, launch, and operation of a new Landsat satellite. This new system, Landsat 7, was launched in April 1999. It is the latest in a series of Earth observations satellites dating back to 1972. The 30-year record of data acquired by the Landsat satellites constitutes the longest continuous record of the Earth's continental surfaces. Preservation of the existing record and continuation of the Landsat capability are identified by the law as critical to land source monitoring and global change research.
Landsat 7 has a unique and essential role in the realm of Earth observing satellites in orbit. No other system such as Landsat has a combination of synaptic coverage, high spatial resolution, spectral range, and radiometric calibration. In addition, the Landsat project is committed to providing Landsat digital data to the user community in greater quantities more quickly and at lower cost than any previous time in history of the project.
The earth observing instrument on Landsat 7 giving the enhanced thematic mapper plus replicates the capabilities of the highly successful thematic mapper instruments on Landsat 4 and 5. The enhanced thematic mapper plus also includes new features that make it a more versatile and efficient instrument for global change studies, land cover monitoring and assessment, and large area mapping than it's designed for. The primary new features on Landsat 7 are a panchromatic band with 15-meter spatial resolution, an onboard full aperture 5% absolute radiometric calibration, and a thermal infrared channel with 60-meter spatial resolution.
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Related
Eyes on Earth Episode 127 – The Historic Landsat 7 Mission
In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk about the incredible career of Landsat 7, which collected science imagery of the Earth for nearly 25 years. The Flight Operations Team at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and engineers at EROS work together to collect imagery, send commands to the satellite, and keep it healthy. After over 133,000 orbits and 3.3 million images collected, Landsat 7 stopped...
Related
Eyes on Earth Episode 127 – The Historic Landsat 7 Mission
In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk about the incredible career of Landsat 7, which collected science imagery of the Earth for nearly 25 years. The Flight Operations Team at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and engineers at EROS work together to collect imagery, send commands to the satellite, and keep it healthy. After over 133,000 orbits and 3.3 million images collected, Landsat 7 stopped...