At 16 feet tall, with a 32 foot long solar array, Landsat 8 orbits Earth at an altitude of 438 miles, moving at a speed of 16,760 miles per hour. It takes 99 minutes to complete one orbit, with about 14.5 orbits each day. There have been 5,319 orbits in the first year of Landsat 8's mission. It takes 16 days to build a complete scan of the globe, and on the 17th day the orbit cycle begins again.
Between the two instruments on board, Landsat 8 records data in 11 separate wavelength regions spanning visible, infrared, and thermal radiation. The data is transmitted several times a day to the USGS Earth Resources and Observation Science Center in Sioux Falls, SD, where it is added to the archive of Landsat data stretching back to 1972. In its first year, users have downloaded 1,322,969 scenes of Landsat 8 data from the USGS.
Landsat 8 continues the decades-long Landsat record of Earth's land surface at a scale where the impacts of humans and nature can be detected and monitored over time. Every continent, every season, every year, at a resolution that can distinguish an area the size of a baseball field. With help from Landsat we can monitor the cultivation of our food crops, quantify our precious water resources as they ebb and flow, and track deforestation globally. Landsat data constitute a key ingredient in decision making for agriculture, climate research, disaster mitigation, ecosystems, forestry, human health, urban growth, and water management.", "items": [], "extra_data": {} }, { "id": 344869, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11490/#media_group_344869", "widget": "Video player", "title": "", "caption": "", "description": "On Feb. 11, 2013, Landsat 8 launched into Earth orbit, riding on an Atlas V rocket. Weighing 6,133 pounds, Landsat 8 is the eigth satellite in the long-running Landsat program, jointly managed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey. Until operations were handed over to the USGS, Landsat 8 was formally known as the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM).
For complete transcript, click here.
Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.
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The individual wavelength bands can be combined into color images, with different combinations of the 11 bands revealing different information about the condition of the land cover.The data for this video was collected by Landsat 5 on November 10, 2011. || ", "release_date": "2014-02-24T19:00:00-05:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:51:09.742322-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 458057, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011400/a011491/G2014-020_Onion_Skin_MASTER_nasaportal_print.jpg", "filename": "G2014-020_Onion_Skin_MASTER_nasaportal_print.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "Landsat satellites circle the globe, recording data in 11 different wavelengths. The individual wavelength bands can be combined into color images, with different combinations of the 11 bands revealing different information about the condition of the land cover.For complete transcript, click here.Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.This video is also available on our YouTube channel.", "width": 1024, "height": 576, "pixels": 589824 } }, { "id": 11481, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11481/", "page_type": "Produced Video", "title": "Landsat Orbit Swath", "description": "This visualization of the orbit of Landsat 8 is narrated by Jim Irons, LDCM Project Scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.As a Landsat satellite flies over the surface of the Earth the instruments aboard the satellite are able to view a swath 185 kilometers wide and collect images along that swath as the satellite proceeds through its orbit. The spacecraft travels at approximately 4.7 miles per second. The satellite travels from north to south while it's over the sunlit portion of the Earth, and travels south to north over the dark side of the Earth. One orbit takes about 99 minutes, so that's about approximately 15 orbits in a 24 hour period. The orbit's maintained such that after 16 days, the entire surface of the Earth has come within view of the Landsat instruments, while sunlit, and then on day 17 the first ground path is repeated. So we get to view the entire surface once every 16 days. || ", "release_date": "2014-02-11T10:00:00-05:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:51:14.032859-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 458276, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011400/a011481/G2014-016_LDCM_orbit_swath.png", "filename": "G2014-016_LDCM_orbit_swath.png", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "As a Landsat satellite flies over the surface of the Earth the instruments aboard the satellite are able to view a swath 185 kilometers wide and collect images along that swath as the satellite proceeds through its orbit. The spacecraft travels at approximately 4.7 miles per second. The satellite travels from north to south while it's over the sunlit portion of the Earth, and travels south to north over the dark side of the Earth. One orbit takes about 99 minutes, so that's about approximately 15 orbits in a 24 hour period. The orbit's maintained such that after 16 days, the entire surface of the Earth has come within view of the Landsat instruments, while sunlit, and then on day 17 the first ground path is repeated. So we get to view the entire surface once every 16 days.For complete transcript, click here.Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.", "width": 1280, "height": 720, "pixels": 921600 } } ], "sources": [], "products": [], "newer_versions": [], "older_versions": [], "alternate_versions": [] }