Changing planet —
“Landsat has equipped a vital reference for assessing prolonged-timeframe changes.”
Enlarge / Pure coloration photos from March 1999, April 2005, Could well 2011, and April 2021 by Landsat satellites tale the petrified Lake Powell reservoir and Decrease Colorado River.
NASA/USGS
A Delta rocket launched the exiguous Earth Sources Technology Satellite in July 1972 with a straightforward mission: to pick out out on out multi-spectral imagery of the planet and assess changes over time.
Records from the polar-orbiting satellite tv for pc proved so invaluable that NASA and the US Geological Perceive renamed the vehicle Landsat 1 in 1975, and the organizations have since launched a succession of increasingly extra extra refined “Landsat” satellites to proceed observations. Which means, now we have a nearly half of-century-prolonged file of changes to the planet’s surface—from farms and forests to glaciers and urban areas.
Whereas the suggestions from the Landsat missions has proved invaluable, it has also been somewhat depressing. The satellites have gathered an just file of tropical deforestation within the Amazon, verifying the claims of environmental safety organizations. They’ve also cataloged rising water shortage within the Western United States and chronicled ice losses true by the overwhelming majority of Earth’s glaciers.
“Landsat has equipped a vital reference for assessing prolonged-timeframe changes to Earth’s land atmosphere attributable to both natural and human forcing,” scientists concluded within the journal Far-off Sensing of Atmosphere, in 2020.
Indubitably, you cannot arrange what you cannot measure. So if we’re smarter about how now we have changed the planet, perchance humans can become smarter about how we commerce the planet in due course.
Now, NASA seeks to advance the legacy of the Landsat program with the launch of the Landsat 9 mission on Monday. In a total lot of ways, the satellite tv for pc is a clone of Landsat 8, which launched in 2013. However, the unusual satellite tv for pc contains an upgraded thermal infrared sensor as smartly as backup systems to enable the instrument to operate for a longer lifetime. These satellites every weigh about 3 metric rather a lot; the customary Landsat had a mass of 900 kg.
The Landsat 9 mission is scheduled to launch on Monday at 11: 12 am PT (18: 11 UTC) from Vandenberg Air Drive Horrible in California. Though ground fog would possibly well perchance obscure the launch, overall climate conditions are highly favorable for the liftoff are attempting.
An Atlas V rocket, built by United Launch Alliance, will boost Landsat into a shut to-polar orbit. This would possibly well perchance also be the 300th overall rocket of an Atlas-household rocket from Vandenberg, relationship back to August 1962. This would possibly well perchance also be the 88th launch of an Atlas V rocket, which also beforehand launched the Landsat 8 mission.
A webcast of the launch will lumber reside about 40 minutes sooner than liftoff.
Landsat 9 launch.
