The LANDSAT Program

(Created by Thomas Alcorn, History 135, August 2007)

Assignment Background Chronology Links Further Reading

CHRONOLOGY
October 4, 1957	Sputnik I (Russian) is launched. About the size of a basketball, the first artificial Earth satellite weighs 184 pounds and takes about 98 minutes to complete one orbit.
January 31, 1958	The United States launches its first satellite, the 30.8-pound Explorer 1.
April 12, 1961	First Man in Space: Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyyevich Gagarin aboard the Vostok 1 Spacecraft
August 14, 1966	U.S. Lunar Orbiter 1 enters moon orbit, and takes the first picture of the Earth from the distance of the moon.
December 21, 1968	Apollo 8 flight to the moon. As the ship travels outward, the crew focuses a portable television camera on Earth and for the first time humanity sees its home from afar, a tiny "blue marble" hanging in the blackness of space.
July 20, 1969	First Manned Moon Landing: Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, Jr. became the first humans to set foot on another world.
November 13, 1971	American space probe Mariner 9 is the first spacecraft to orbit another planet, Mars. 100% of the Martian surface is mapped over the next year.
July 23, 1972	Landsat-1 Launched
May 14, 1973	First U.S. Space Station: Skylab is launched.
May 17, 1974	NASA launches the first Synchronous Meteorological Satellite, SMS-1.
January 22, 1975	Landsat-2 Launched
1975	NASA changes ERTS program name to Landsat.
August-Septeber, 1977	Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are launched to meet with Jupiter in 1979 and Saturn in 1980.
January 6, 1978	Landsat-1 Decomissioned
March 5, 1978	Landsat-3 Launched
April 12, 1981	First Space Shuttle Columbia is launched.
February 25, 1982	Landsat-2 Decomissioned
July 16, 1982	Landsat-4 Launched
March 31, 1983	Landsat-3 Decomissioned
March 1, 1984	Landsat-5 Launched
July 17, 1984	Land Remote Sensing Commercialization Act : Facilitated the commercialization of the Federal Government's civilian land remote-sensing satellite system, known as Landsat.
October, 1985	EOSAT takes control of Landsat-4 and Landsat-5.
April 24, 1990	Hubble Space Telescope is launched. While the telescope is successfully deployed, the primary mirror is seriously flawed resulting in fuzzy images.
October 28, 1992	Land Remote Sensing Policy Act: Authorized the procurement of Landsat 7 and assured the continued availability of Landsat digital data and images.
October 5, 1993	Landsat-6 Launch failure
December 14, 1993	Landsat-4 Set to "Standby"
1995	EOSAT acquired by Space Imaging
May 18, 1996	X Prize competition announced: 10 Million dollars to the first person or team to safely launch and land a spacecraft capable of carrying three people to a suborbital altitute or 100km and repeat the trip again within two weeks. This contest is designed to inspire and jumpstart civilian and commercial space programs.
April 15, 1999	Landsat-7 Launched
August 2001	Landsat-5 MSS powered off
July 1, 2001	Space Imaging relinquishes Landsat commercial rights and operational control of Landsats 4 and 5 to USGS.
December 15, 2001	Landsat-4 Decomissioned
May 31, 2003	The Scan Line Corrector (SLC) Failed. This caused data to be missed or even at times repeated. Also gaps would occur in the imagery.
September 5, 2003	A fix to the SLC Failure was seen to be permanent after an attempt to reconfigure the system.
November 1, 2005	Landsat-5 TM ops suspended
January 12, 2006	Space Imaging aquired by ORBIMAGE. The combined company was rebranded as GEOEYE, the world's largest commercial remote-sensing company.
January 30, 2006	Landsat-5 Resumed TM ops
2011	Proposed LDCM Launch Date
February 11, 2013	Landsat 8 is launched. Seven is still in operation to this day
2023?	Lansat 9 to be possibly launched. See this timeline.

The LANDSAT Program

CHRONOLOGY