Landsat Data Continuity Mission Launched
NASA Launches New Earth Observation Satellite to Continue 40-Year Legacy, SpaceRef
“NASA’s Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) roared into space at 1:02 p.m. EST (10:02 a.m. PST) Monday aboard an Atlas V rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
The LDCM spacecraft separated from the rocket 79 minutes after launch and the first signal was received 3 minutes later at a ground station in Svalbard, Norway. The solar arrays deployed 86 minutes after launch, and the spacecraft is generating power from them. LDCM is on course to reach its operational, sun-synchronous, polar orbit 438 miles (705 kilometers) above Earth within two months.”
Related:
– VIDEO: An Atlas V Launches NASA’s Newest Landsat Satellite
– VIDEO: Landsat Data Continuity Mission Spacecraft Separation
– VIDEO: Press Briefing: New Landsat Satellite Set for Launch
– VIDEO: Press Briefing: Landsat Data Continuity Mission Science Goals
– VIDEO: Landsat Launch a NASA Social Occasion
– SpaceRef Earth
I don’t understand why they turned off Landsat 5 and not Landsat 7, since it is the one with the problems. Half its images are black in thin streaks due to a malfunction in the mirror scanning system that doesn’t record half the data. Landsat 5 photos are in contrast, perfect.
Landsat 5 lasted 28 years — longer than any other Earth-observation satellite. It had a number of problems; it could no longer transmit those “perfect photos” in June of last year and it had an unrecoverable gyroscope failure in November. It was thanks to the heroic efforts of the operations team that kept it going til then. The comparatively young Landsat 7 has better spacecraft health and is needed to do comparisons with Landsat 8 now that it is in orbit.