Landsat 8 Mission

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 Summary

Full Name
Landsat 8
aka L8, Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM), Landsat-8
Mission Status
Operational (extended)
Mission Agencies
Launch Date
11 Feb 2013
Mission Links
EOL Date
Feb 2028
EO Portal Info

Orbit Details

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
NORAD Catalog #
International Designator

Mission Instruments

OLI - Operational Land Imager
TIRS - Thermal Infrared Sensor

Mission Measurements

CategoryParameterInstrument(s)
AtmosphereCloud type, amount and cloud top temperature OLI, TIRS
Radiation budget OLI, TIRS
LandAlbedo and reflectance OLI, TIRS
Vegetation OLI, TIRS
Surface temperature (land) OLI, TIRS
Multi-purpose imagery (land) OLI, TIRS
Inland Waters OLI, TIRS
OceanOcean colour/biology OLI
Ocean topography/currents OLI
Multi-purpose imagery (ocean) OLI
Snow & IceSnow cover, edge and depth OLI, TIRS
Sea ice cover, edge and thickness OLI, TIRS

Featured 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

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