Summary

The Landsat Program is a joint effort of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to gather Earth resource data using a series of satellites. NASA was responsible for developing and launching the spacecrafts. The USGS is responsible for flight operations, maintenance, and management of all ground data reception, processing, archiving, product generation, and distribution. A primary objective of the Landsat Program is to ensure a collection of consistently calibrated Earth imagery.

Landsat’s mission is to establish and execute a data acquisition strategy that ensures the repetitive acquisition of observations over the Earth’s land mass, coastal boundaries, and coral reefs and to ensure that the data acquired are of maximum utility in supporting the scientific objective of monitoring changes in the Earth’s land surface.

Superseded by FS 2010–3026

Superseded by FS 2005–3130

First posted March 2003