Landsat

Landsat-5	Landsat-7
Source: http://www.nasa.gov, access on 31st, Oct. 2011	Source: http://science.hq.nasa.gov, access on 31st, Oct. 2011

Landsat satellites collect data in the visible (30m), panchromatic (15m), mid-infrared (30m) and thermal infrared (60 to 120m) regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. These data have an approximately 16 day repeat cycle with a 10:00am equator crossing time. This data is particularly valuable for land cover and vegetation parameter mapping. Due to an instrument malfunction onboard Landsat 7 in May 2003, the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) is now only able to provide useful image data within the central ~20km of the swath. As Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper is still in operation, it is being increasingly relied upon. The approximate scene size is 170 × 183km. The Landsat coverage for the Murrumbidgee Catchment is summarised below. While there is no budget allocation for purchasing Landsat data, it is useful to keep these overpasses in mind for future reference. Landsat data can be downloaded from NASA.

Mission	Landsat
Sensor	TM & MSS (MSS) was turned off in Aug. 1995		ETM+
Spacecraft	Landsat-5		Landsat-7
Launch date	1st, Mar. 1984		15th, Apr. 1999
Design life	minimum 3 years		minimum 5 years
Orbit	Sun-synchronous, polar orbit in altitude of 705km.Cross Equator at 9:45am ((±15min) local time (descending mode)		Sun-synchronous, polar orbit in altitude of 705km.Cross Equator at 10:00am ((±15min) local time (descending mode)
Spacecraft operations control centre	NASA
Channel and wavelength (micrometers)	5 bands VNIR (0.45-1.75)	1 band TIR (10.40-12.50)	1 band SWIR (2.08-2.35)	1 band PAN (0.52-0.90; +ETM only)
Incidence angle(°)	0
Swath (km)	185 × 170
Spatial resolution (m)	30	120 (TM), 60 (+ETM)	30	15
Temporal resolution	Repeat coverage 16 days

 

Landsat overpass time

The Landsat overpass times for the SMAPEx study area have been determined from the USGS Global Visualization Viewer, and are provided in the table below. Date and time are in UTC.

                  ●=full Landsat                                                ○=partial Landsat coverage

                  ●=concurrent                                                                 ●=non concurrent

Date (UTC)	Landsat overpass start time (UTC)	Durations (s)	Spacecraft Identifier	Flight Type
04/12/2010	●23:52	26	Landsat-5	●Regional
05/12/2010	-	-	-	Target YA
06/12/2010	-	-	-	Regional
07/12/2010	-	-	-	Multi-angle PALSAR transect Multi-azimuth
08/12/2010	-	-	-	Regional