Landsat
The NASA/USGS Landsat program provides the longest continuous space-based record of Earth’s land in existence. Landsat data are essential for making informed decisions about our planet’s resources and environment.
Overview
The Landsat program consists of a series of Earth-observing satellite missions jointly managed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Since 1972, Landsat satellites have continuously acquired images of the Earth’s land surface and provided an uninterrupted data archive to assist land managers, planners, and policymakers in making more informed decisions about natural resources and the environment. Landsat’s free and publicly accessible data contributed an estimated $25.6 billion to the United States economy in 2023 alone.
With each new launch, Landsat’s decades-long data record becomes even more valuable. As the longest continuous space-based record of Earth’s surface, Landsat offers a unique resource to scientists studying long-term changes. Researchers have used Landsat’s archive to study how cities have grown, coastlines have shifted, crop cycles have changed, and forests have transformed since the 1970s.
This groundbreaking research is possible because Landsat’s carefully calibrated, science-quality archive is the "gold standard" for satellite data. The program prioritizes science-grade instruments and data, ensuring that researchers can be confident that changes in subsequent Landsat images reflect changes on the ground. All NASA data is free and open to the public, meaning that anyone, anywhere on Earth, can use Landsat.
Benefits to Society
Landsat is a critical tool for decision-making worldwide, delivering substantial economic and environmental benefits. In 2023 alone, Landsat delivered $25.6 billion economic value to the U.S. economy across a range of sectors. The U.S. Department of Agriculture uses Landsat to improve maps, saving $300 million annually in flood insurance premiums for farmers. The U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management rely on Landsat data for post-wildfire restoration efforts, saving between $2 and $9 million annually.
Landsat also helps monitor critical water resources: the Idaho Department of Water Resources saves nearly $20 million annually for estimating well-water usage, while monitoring water quality with Landsat data saves about $51 million annually in lab costs. To discover more about how Landsat helps researchers and policymakers better understand and sustainably manage Earth’s natural resources, explore the featured societal benefits below.
Agriculture & Food Security
Landsat data empower land managers to optimize crop health and maximize food security, benefiting farmers and consumers worldwide.
Disaster Management
When disaster strikes, Landsat offers a critical bird’s-eye view to help communities assess damage and coordinate response efforts.
Ecosystems & Biodiversity
Landsat monitors Earth’s varied and complex ecosystems—from forests to wetlands to coral reefs—that sustain wildlife and human communities.
Energy Resources
As the global demand for energy grows, Landsat plays a pivotal role in identifying new energy sources while monitoring the environmental impacts of existing operations.
Forest Management
Landsat equips forest managers with the necessary insights to conserve forests for timber production and biodiversity while combating threats like pest infestation and deforestation.
Human Health
Landsat tracks urban heat, algal blooms, disease vectors, and other threats to human health.
Rangeland Management
Landsat monitors rangeland vegetation health and forage production across grasslands, shrublands, woodlands, and deserts that cover over half of Earth's land surface.
Urban Development
Landsat captures patterns of urban growth, enabling city planners to monitor the impacts of land use change and plan future development.
Water Resources
Landsat informs water resources decisions from monitoring agricultural water use to identify reservoir pollution, impacting millions of people’s access to this essential resource.
Wildfires
Communities use Landsat data to intervene before, during, and after a wildfire to protect their land and maintain healthy forest ecosystems.
Guardian Landsat - Firewatch
Wildfires are a powerful force, reshaping landscapes in hours. NASA and USGS Landsat satellites have been tracking these fires for decades, helping scientists understand and manage wildfire risk, map burned areas, and monitor ecosystem recovery—all from space.
Discover how Landsat data supports wildfire management, from spotting early fire risks to watching nature's recovery. With climate change intensifying fires, Landsat remains a critical tool for safeguarding our planet.
Landsat as the Gold Standard
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Science-Grade Instrumentation
Scientific studies rely on science-grade instruments—instruments that record information consistently and accurately. Landsat sensors are carefully calibrated to measure subtle changes on Earth’s surface, allowing scientists to reliably identify short- and long-term trends.
Before those instruments reach orbit, they undergo rigorous testing to measure exactly how they will perform in space. This testing helps scientists ensure that the instruments continue collecting reliable data during the entire operational life of the satellite.
Even with such meticulous preparation, engineers add in another layer of protection: redundancy. Each satellite carries backup systems, such as duplicate detectors, calibration lamps, and electronics, in case the primary equipment fails. This built-in insurance helps minimize gaps in the data, serving the fundamental Landsat mission goal of long-term continuity.
The Operational Land Imager (OLI), built by the Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation, measures in the visible, near infrared, and shortwave infrared portions of the spectrum. The opening facing the left of the photo points at the Earth, and the opening on the right towards the sun, to calibrate the instrument.Ball Aerospace -
Calibration and Validation
Landsat is considered the “gold standard” of medium-resolution satellite data because of the program’s tradition of rigorous, independently-verified calibration. Careful calibration ensures that Landsat imagery accurately reflects the conditions on the ground and that those measurements are consistent across time and between sensors. That means that when scientists identify a difference between images, they can be confident that it reflects an actual change on the ground rather than a discrepancy in the data.
Calibration and Validation (Cal/Val) teams from NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) collaborate on Landsat calibration throughout the entire life of a mission.
Many commercial satellite companies use Landsat’s free, reliable data to calibrate their own data. Landsat’s careful calibration also makes it possible to fuse data from multiple satellite missions, providing data for new innovative data products, comprehensive global monitoring and informed decision making. With decision-makers around the world increasingly relying on satellite information, calibration is essential—better data power better decisions.
A technician surveys the TIRS instrument and calibration equipment.NASA/Goddard/Bill Hrybyk -
Spectral Coverage
Broad spectral coverage—the ability to sense parts of the electromagnetic spectrum beyond the visible and near-infrared (VNIR)—is essential to accurately study Earth’s surface. In addition to VNIR, Landsats 8 and 9 collect data in three shortwave-infrared bands and two thermal-infrared bands.
These longer wavelength bands play a vital role in measuring evapotranspiration to track water use, detecting fire scars and volcanic lava flows, and calculating spectral indices to monitor vegetation health, soil conditions, and land use. Landsat’s robust spectral coverage enables researchers to study nearly every terrestrial environment on Earth..png?w=1600&h=812&fit=clip&crop=faces%2Cfocalpoint)
A graphic comparing the bands between different Landsat satellites.NASA/Ross Walter
Data Continuity for Earth Observation
Landsat is the longest continuous space-based record of Earth’s land surface. The program has provided scientists with visible and near-infrared imagery since 1972, and natural-color and thermal-infrared imagery since 1978. While technology improved with each mission, data remained compatible with previous missions to support both existing and evolving user needs. Researchers can use decades of gap-free, reliable, carefully-calibrated data to analyze how land has changed over time.
This uninterrupted record of Earth’s land surface allows scientists to study long-term trends including urbanization, coastline change, glacial retreat, and forest dynamics. The future success of the Landsat program—and its many societal and economic benefits—relies on the ongoing collection of science-grade data.
Landsat is Foundational
Landsat is a powerhouse for scientific discovery. In the decades since the program’s inception, Landsat data have helped scientists monitor large-scale processes like glacial retreat and coastline change, train machine learning algorithms to detect change over time, and even discover a previously uncharted island.
Access to Landsat data became free and open in 2008. Since then, the number of publications citing Landsat data has steadily increased, including many articles in major journals such as Science and Nature. Landsat forms the basis of widely-used products including the National Land Cover Database (NLCD), OpenET, and more. Explore the groundbreaking research that Landsat makes possible.
Harnessing Machine Learning with Landsat Data
Over the past few years, machine learning techniques have been increasingly used to analyze the vast amount of data collected by the Landsat mission, which has been circling the globe for over 50 years. The data has been used to classify different types of land cover, detect changes to landscapes over time, and map the impact of human activity on the environment.
Learn MoreOver the past 50 years, eight Landsat satellites have circled the planet, which have helped to save and improve lives and support our economy. NASA will continue to work with the USGS to improve access to Landsat's unprecedented 50-year record and build upon the program's legacy.
Bill Nelson
Former NASA Administrator
People of Landsat
Jim Tucker
Landsat Science Pioneer in Global Vegetation Monitoring
Brian Markham
Landsat Calibration and Data Quality Expert
Virginia Norwood
Inventor of Landsat’s Multispectral Scanner
Chris Neigh
Landsat 9 Project Scientist
Bruce Cook
Landsat Next Project Scientist
Julia Barsi
Landsat Calibration Scientist
Jim Irons
Landsat 8 Project Scientist
Director Emeritus Earth Sciences Division
Morgan Crowley
Forest Fire Research Scientist & WildFireSat Tier 2 Science Lead
Canadian Forest Service
Co-Director of Ladies of Landsat
Kate Fickas
Landsat Researcher Advancing Water Quality Applications
U.S. Geological Survey Mendenhall Fellow
Robert Washington
Landsat Scientist Studying Dryland Degradation and Resilience
Inbal Becker-Reshef
Landsat Researcher Advancing Global Agricultural Monitoring
Director, NASA Harvest
Related Resources
Featured Publication
Evaluating HLS Vegetation Indices
In February, NASA released a suite of nine vegetation indices derived from the Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 (HLS) Version 2.0 dataset. New research, led by members of the HLS science team, confirmed that these vegetation indices (VIs) are highly consistent between Landsat and Sentinel-2 sensors, with most VIs showing strong correlation (R2 > 0.94) except for the chlorophyll vegetation index (CVI, R2 = 0.5).
The study analyzed more than 136 million cloud-free observations across global landscapes from 2021-2022, evaluating the discrepancies between 545 pairs of images derived from Landsat and Sentinel-2 data. While refinements to the HLS harmonization algorithm could further improve the usefulness of these vegetation indices, the overall between-sensor consistency validates HLS-derived VIs as valuable resources for studying vegetation dynamics, including crop growth, forest loss, and disturbance monitoring.
