Summary

Since November 2000, the National Aero-nautics and Space Administration (NASA) Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) mission has dem-onstrated the capabilities of a dozen space-craft sensor and communication innovations. Onboard the EO-1 spacecraft are two land remote sensing instruments. The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) acquires data in spectral bands and at resolutions similar to Landsat. The Hyperion instrument, which is the first civilian spaceborne hyperspectral imager, acquires data in 220 10-nanometer bands cov-ering the visible, near, and shortwave-infra-red bands. The initial one-year technology demonstration phase of the mission included a detailed comparison of ALI with the Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) instrument. Specifications for the Operational Land Imager (OLI), the planned successor to ETM+, were formulated in part from perfor-mance characteristics of ALI.

Recognizing the remarkable performance of the satellite’s instruments and the excep-tional value of the data, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and NASA agreed in Decem-ber 2001 to share responsibility for operating EO-1. The extended mission continues, on a cost-reimbursable basis, as long as cus-tomer sales fully recover flight and ground operations costs. As of May 2005, more than 17,800 scenes from each instrument have been acquired, indexed, archived, and made available to the public.

First posted March 2005

Supersedes FS 032–03