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[Satellite TODAY 03-25-13] The Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) has completed initial checkout and snapped the mission’s first multispectral images. The spacecraft was launched on Feb. 11.

    Using Ball Aerospace & Technologies’ Operational Land Imager (OLI), and the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS), built by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the LDCM will collect multispectral digital images of the global land surface including coastal regions, polar ice, islands, and the continental areas.

    The Landsat series, managed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), has provided key management data of the Earth’s land surface for use by scientific, commercial and governmental agencies to understand the impact of global land changes for the past 40 years.

    The LDCM is expected to provide increased radiometric sensitivity and additional spectral bands for a total of 11 spectral bands, compared with eight bands on its predecessor, Landsat 7. Also, LDCM is expected to return 400 images per day, compared to 250 images per day from Landsat 7.

    Instruments on earlier Landsat satellites used scan mirrors to sweep the instrument fields of view across the surface swath width and transmit light to a few detectors. Ball Aerospace’s OLI instrument uses long detector arrays, with over 7,000 detectors per spectral band, aligned across its focal plane to view across the swath. This "push-broom" design results in a more sensitive instrument providing improved land surface information. 

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