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NASA's Landsat 9 Set to Launch

September 27, 2021
By WeatherBug's Ali Husain
On September 27th, 2021, NASA is planning to launch the latest addition to the Landsat series—Landsat 9.

Landsat 9, upon launch, is supposed to take over the current orbit of Landsat 7, which is set to be decommissioned. At that point, Landsat 8 and 9 will work in unison to produce more than 1,500 images a day.

By continuing the Landsat mission, NASA is extending our ability to measure changes to the land surface at a very small scale. With applications such as tropical deforestation alerts, water quality monitoring and crop condition reports now possible with the new satellite constellation, Landsat has emerged as a cornerstone of the global constellation of imagers.

Landsat 9 will carry two main instruments: the Operational Land-Imager-2 (OLI-2), and the Thermal Infrared Sensor-2 (TIS-2). Overall, the design for Landsat 9 largely replicates Landsat 8, with the updated design fixing known errors in the existing sensor onboard Landsat 8.

This advanced piece of technology will allow us to make more informed decisions about some of the most critical aspects of our changing world, including urban expansion, tropical deforestation, water scarcity and use, coral reef degradation, glacier and sea-ice retreat and natural and man-made disasters.

Credit: NASA
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Story Image via NASA