NASA Launching Powerful Landsat Earth-Observation Satellite

The payload faring containing the Landsat Data Continuity Mission LDCM spacecraft is lifted to the top of Space Launch Complex-3E at Vandenberg Air Force Base where it will be hoisted atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V for launch. 

CREDIT: NASA/VAFB

NASA's latest Earth-observation satellite blasted off Feb. 11, continuing a venerable program that has been monitoring environmental change and resource use for more than four decades.

The Landsat Data Continuity Mission launched atop an Atlas 5 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The LDCM spacecraft will track changes in forest cover, agricultural output and urban sprawl, among other things, adding to a Earth-observation record that has been growing continuously since Landsat 1 lifted off in July 1972.

"LDCM will be the best Landsat spacecraft yet, in terms of improved capabilities and the amount of data returned," mission program executive David Jarrett, of NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., told reporters Friday (Feb. 8) in a prelaunch press briefing. "LDCM will continue the Landsat legacy well into the future."

The new satellite separated from the rocket an hour and twenty minutes after liftoff, and the peep of its first signal was received three minutes later at a ground station in Norway.

The satellite will reach its operational orbit 438 miles (735 kilometers) over the Earth within two months.

It is designed to have a minimum five year life span, although it is fueled for a 10-year run in space, orbiting the Earth about 14 times a day.

The satellite is the eighth in a series that has been instrumental in tracking the changing face of the planet.

"This data is a key tool for monitoring climate change and has led to the improvement of human and biodiversity health, energy and water management, urban planning, disaster recovery and agriculture monitoring -- all resulting in incalculable benefits to the U.S. and world economy," NASA administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement.

The new spacecraft's powerful sensors will gather 400 "screens" of the planet a day and relay them for storage in ground base archives where they can be accessed by anyone.