On September 27, the Landsat 9 orbiter launched, and a little over a month later, it is returning awesome images that will in time turn into amazing science. The mission had first light on October 31 and celebrated Halloween by looking at how Earth was dressed up for the season.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson says it best: Landsat 9’s first images capture critical observations about our changing planet and will advance this joint mission of NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey that provides critical data about Earth’s landscapes and coastlines seen from space. This program has the proven power to not only improve lives but also save lives. NASA will continue to work with USGS to strengthen and improve accessibility to Landsat data so decision-makers in America – and around the world – better understand the devastation of the climate crisis, manage agricultural practices, preserve precious resources and respond more effectively to natural disasters.

The first set of images include Detroit and neighboring Lake St. Clair, the Florida coastline, Navajo County in Arizona, the Himalayas, and the coastal islands of northern Australia. And while Landsat images are always amazing and provide a wealth of scientific information, this newest member of the Landsat family is poised to help us understand how the growing issue of climate change is affecting regions all over Earth. That’s because of improved instrumentation over the previous satellites, Landsat 8, which is still in orbit, and Landsat 7, which is the satellite being replaced.

One major difference between Landsat 7 and 9 is the enhanced color differentiation. Where 7 could only detect 256 different shades of a color, Landsat 9 can detect over 16,000 shades, which means the latest satellite can detect much more subtle changes than ever before, especially when it comes to darker regions such as water or forests.

All this information could help us get a handle on water usage and wildfire impacts, as well as the effects of climate change on coral reefs, glaciers, and ice shelves. Karen St. Germain from NASA explains: In a changing climate, continuous and free access to Landsat data, and the other data in NASA’s Earth-observing fleet, helps data users, including city planners, farmers and scientists, plan for the future.

NASA’s Landsat 9 team will now conduct a 100-day check-out period which will test and calibrate various instruments and systems on the satellite before the mission is handed over to the USGS in January 2022. Once the satellite is fully operational, it is expected to collect about 1,500 images of our planet every single day, with a full picture of Earth collected once every eight days. All of that data will be freely available to the public from the USGS website, and we suspect we will be bringing you even more climate change stories next year once scientists start analyzing the information.

More Information

NASA press release