Landsat 8 Satellite Mission Summary

CEOS EO HANDBOOK – MISSION SUMMARY - Landsat 8 -

Full Name

Landsat 8
aka L8, Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM), Landsat-8

Status

Operational (extended)

Mission Agencies

USGS , NASA

Launch Date

11 Feb 2013

Mission Links

mission site | mission site | data access portal | data access portal

EOL Date

Feb 2028

EO Portal Info

NORAD Catalog #

39084 (TLE)

International Designator

2013-008A

Orbit Type

Sun-synchronous

Orbit Period

98.9 minutes

Orbit Sense

Descending

Orbit Inclination

98.2 deg

Orbit Altitude

705 km

Orbit Longitude

Orbit LST

10:11

Repeat Cycle

16 days

Objectives and Applications

5-year mission design life with at least 10 years of consumables. Earth resources, land surface, environmental monitoring, agriculture and forestry, disaster monitoring and assessment, ice and snow cover.

Mission Measurements

Category	Parameter	Instrument(s)
Atmosphere	Cloud type, amount and cloud top temperature	OLI, TIRS
	Radiation budget	OLI, TIRS
Land	Albedo and reflectance	OLI, TIRS
	Vegetation	OLI, TIRS
	Surface temperature (land)	OLI, TIRS
	Multi-purpose imagery (land)	OLI, TIRS
	Inland Waters	OLI, TIRS
Ocean	Ocean colour/biology	OLI
	Ocean topography/currents	OLI
	Multi-purpose imagery (ocean)	OLI
Snow & Ice	Snow cover, edge and depth	OLI, TIRS
	Sea ice cover, edge and thickness	OLI, TIRS

Mission Instruments

OLI - Operational Land Imager

TIRS - Thermal Infrared Sensor

Featured Datasets
More Datasets

Collection 2 Dec-2020	CARD4L Landsat Collection 2 marks the second major reprocessing effort on the Landsat archive by the USGS that results in several data product improvements that harness recent advancements in data processing, algorithm development, and data access and distribution capabilities. Read more

GA Landsat Collection 3
Jul-2019

The United States Geological Survey's (USGS) Landsat satellite program has been capturing images of the Australian continent for more than thirty years. DEA takes the hundreds of thousands of images, prepares them for Australian conditions, and makes adjustments to correct inconsistencies caused by changes in the atmosphere each time an image is captured (i.e. absence or presence of cloud cover), so that the data can be analysed to provide information about our changing continent. This corrected data set is known as Landsat Surface Reflectance, and it forms the basis for many of the other information products produced by DEA. Products derived from the surface reflectance collection include Fractional Cover, Water Observations from Space, the Intertidal Extents Model, and High and Low Tide Composites. Read more

Landsat Collection 1 Sep-2016	Landsat Collection 1 consists of Level-1 data products generated from Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI)/Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS), Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+), Landsat 4-5 Thematic Mapper (TM), and Landsat 1-5 Multispectral Scanner (MSS) instruments. Read more*

Landsat 8 OLI-TIRS European Coverage
Jan-2013

The Operational Land Imager (OLI) and the Thermal Infrared Scanner (TIRS) are the two instruments carried on board Landsat-8. The OLI provides two new spectral bands in respect to the Landsat-7 ETM+ instrument, one tailored especially for detecting cirrus clouds and the other for coastal zone observations, and the TIRS collects data for two more narrow thermal bands. The nominal schedules expect the collection of at least 740 OLI and TIRS scenes per day, where each scene is a digital image covering a 185 × 180 km surface area. The collection composed of Level 1 products from Collection 1, from the beginning of the mission up to 31/12/2021, and access is provided through the ESA TPM scheme. Read more

Landsat 8 Collection 2 European Coverage
Jan-2013

The Operational Land Imager (OLI) and the Thermal Infrared Scanner (TIRS) are the two instruments carried on board Landsat-8. The OLI provides two new spectral bands in respect to the Landsat-7 ETM+ instrument, one tailored especially for detecting cirrus clouds and the other for coastal zone observations, and the TIRS collects data for two more narrow thermal bands. The nominal schedules expect the collection of at least 740 OLI and TIRS scenes per day, where each scene is a digital image covering a 185 × 180 km surface area. The collection composed of of Level 1 and Level 2 products from Collection 2, and access is provided through the ESA TPM scheme. Read more

OpenSearch Datasets

Selected IDN OpenSearch Results (search all 125 )
ABoVE: Alder Shrub Cover and Soil Properties, Alaska, 2019, V2

ABoVE: Burn Severity of Soil Organic Matter, Northwest Territories, Canada, 2014-2015

ABoVE: Distribution Maps of Wildland Fire Fuel Components across Alaskan Tundra, 2015 $This dataset provides maps of the distribution of three major wildland fire fuel types at 30 m spatial resolution covering the Alaskan arctic tundra, circa 2015. The three fuel components include woody (evergreen and deciduous shrubs), herbaceous (sedges and grasses), and nonvascular species (mosses and lichens). Multi-seasonal and multispectral mosaics were first developed at 30 m resolution using Landsat 8 surface reflectance data collected from 2013 to 2017. The spectral information from Landsat mosaics was combined with field observations from representative tundra vegetation plots collected during multiple field trips to model the fractional cover of fuel type components. An improved vegetation mask for shrub and graminoid-dominated tundra was developed using random forest classification and is also included. The final fractional cover maps were developed using the trained model with the multi-seasonal and multi-spectral Landsat mosaics across the entire Alaskan tundra.$
ABoVE: Lake Growing Season Green Surface Reflectance Trends, AK and Canada, 1984-2019

ABoVE: Landsat Tundra Greenness and Summer Air Temperatures, Arctic Tundra, 1985-2016

ABoVE: Landsat Vegetation Greenness Trends, Boreal Forest Biome, 1985-2019

ABoVE: Landsat-derived Burn Scar dNBR across Alaska and Canada, 1985-2015

ABoVE: River Ice Breakup and Freeze-up Stages, Yukon River Basin, Alaska, 1972-2016

ABoVE: Riverbank Erosion and Vegetation Changes, Yukon River Basin, Alaska, 1984-2017

ABoVE: Tree Canopy Cover and Stand Age from Landsat, Boreal Forest Biome, 1984-2020

Selected FedEO OpenSearch Results (view all 13 results: browser , table )
Landsat Level2A images (Theia)

Landsat-8 Collection (EO IPT.PL)

Landsat 8 OLI-TIRS European Coverage

ESA WorldCereal products for active irrigation per agro-ecological zone - V1

ESA Greenland Ice Sheet Climate Change Initiative (Greenland_Ice_Sheet_cci): Greenland Calving Front...

CLIMATE APPLICATIONS: Climate change, surface hydrologic modeling, biogeochemical cycling, water sup...

CLIMATE APPLICATIONS: Wildfire mapping, natural hazards, ecosystem monitoring, biogeochemical cyclin...

Landsat8 collection (SENTINEL Hub)

Landsat 8 Collection 2 European Coverage

ESA Lakes Climate Change Initiative (Lakes_cci): Lake products, Version 2.1

Want to explore more? Read about FedEO by ESA or click here to search FedEO or CMR OpenSearch by NASA