On September 27 at 18:11 UTC, a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket launched the Landsat 9 satellite into sun-synchronous orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Landsat 9 is largely the same as its predecessor, Landsat 8. Its two instruments did get upgrades and new names: Operational Land Imager 2 and Thermal Infrared Sensor 2. The Thermal Infrared Sensor 2 had more changes than Operational Land Imager 2, which will improve reliability and solve issues with stray light.

Landsat 9 launched into an orbit with a ground track eight days out of phase with Landsat 8, to improve the temporal resolution of data, which is just a fancy way of saying that those looking at the data can see changes faster when comparing two sets of images side by side.

Also on board the Centaur upper stage with Landsat 9 were four CubeSats carried in a secondary payload adapter called the ESPA Flight System, which was located below the main satellite. These include payloads for NASA, the Air Force Research Laboratory, and the Missile Defense Agency. The two NASA CubeSats are called CUTE and CuPID. According to NASA, “[Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (CUTE)] will measure how near-ultraviolet light from a host star changes when an exoplanet passes in front of it and through a planet’s atmosphere. The Cusp Plasma Imaging Detector (CuPID) from Boston University will measure X-rays emitted when solar wind plasma collides with neutral atoms in Earth’s atmosphere.”

The four CubeSats were deployed after the separation of Landsat 9 and two more burns of the Centaur to ensure the CubeSats would not interfere with Landsat 9 and also decay sooner rather than later since they have no propulsion of their own. After separating the CubeSats, the Centaur performed one final burn to deorbit itself safely into the ocean. Observers in London were treated to quite the show with the Centaurs deorbit burn and fuel dump being clearly visible from the area.

This was the first Atlas V mission to do four Centaur burns, something it has always been capable of but has not needed to do until this launch.

More Information

Landsat 8 (NASA)

Landsat 9 Overview (NASA)

RocketStars: Avionics integration lead brings EFS to launch (ULA)

Launch video