Landsat 8

Having access to Landsat imagery provides the irreplaceable opportunity to observe landscape change on a long-term and global scale. These featured case studies demonstrate the value of Landsat imagery by providing specific examples of how people around the world are using the data to answer meaningful questions.

Landsat 8 (first known as the Landsat Data Continuity Mission) was launch on February 11, 2013 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California on an Atlas-V rocket. The satellite carries the Operational Land Imager (OLI) and the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS). The Landsat 8 satellite orbits the the Earth in a sun-synchronous, near-polar orbit, at an altitude of 705 km (438 mi), inclined at 98.2 degrees, and circles the Earth every 99 minutes. The satellite has a 16-day repeat cycle with an equatorial crossing time: 10:00 a.m. +/- 15 minutes.

Landsat 8 aquires about 740 scenes a day on the Worldwide Reference System-2 (WRS-2) path/row system, with a swath overlap (or sidelap) varying from 7 percent at the Equator to a maximum of approximately 85 percent at extreme latitudes. The scene size is 185 km x 180 km (114 mi x 112 mi). Data products created from over 1.6 million Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS scenes are available.

All Landsat Level-1 data products are created using the best available processing level for each particular scene. The processing level used is determined by the existence of ground control points (GCP), elevation data provided by a Digital Elevation Model (DEM), and/or data collected by the spacecraft and sensor (Payload Correction Data - PCD).

Landsat scenes are processed to a Level-1. Three different Level-1 options are available:

• L1TP/L1T - precision and terrain corrected product, when insufficient reference data is available
• L1GT - terrain corrected products are created when the systematic product has consistent and sufficient locational accuracy to permit the application of a terrain model
• L1GS/L1G - systematic products are created when the locational accuracy is not sufficient to apply terrain correction

Availability

• Germany: Full archive of the data recorded over Germany by the ESA ground stations Matera and Kiruna, 2013-03 - now
• Europe: Full archive of the data recorded over Europe by the ESA ground stations Matera and Kiruna, 2013-03 - now
• Global: -

Updates

• Systematic, continuous updating - (depending on the updates of the data by ESA)

Access

Depending on the environment and the intended use, there are several ways to access the data:

• EO Browser: Landsat-8 ESA Archiv
• Data Explorer:
  • Data Catalogue: CREODIAS
• Path to repository on a Virtual Machine:
  • /eodata/Landsat-8