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Landsat-9


Landsat-8 spacecraft

Landsat-9 spacecraft, © NASA, USGS


Mission and sensor parameters

Launched in 2021, Landsat-9 is an operational earth imaging satellite which is part of joint USGS and NASA-led Landsat programme. It represents the second flight unit of the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) programme. Landsat-9 payload consists of two Earth observing sensors: the Operational Land Imager (OLI) and the Thermal Infra-Red Scanner (TIRS) instruments.

Mission parameters

Table 1 provides a summary of the Landsat-9 mission.

Parameter Specifications
EO Mission Landsat-9
Charter Owner Agency USGS
Providing Agency NASA, USGS
Date of launch 2021-09-27
Temporal coverage 2021-10-31 - present
Mission status Operational
Mission Life Expected >10 years
Orbit Type Sun-synchronous
Equator crossing Time 10:00 AM descending node
Orbit Height 705 km
Orbit Period 98 min
Revisit Frequency 2.6 days at 30° off-nadir
Nominal Swath Width 15.3 km at nadir

Table 1 - Landsat-9 mission parameters.

Sensor specifications

Below specifications of the Operational Land Imager (OLI) and the Landsat Thermal Infra-Red Sensor (TIRS) optical earth observation sensors on board the Landsat-9 platform.

Parameter Specifications
Imager Type Pushbroom sensor with a four-mirror telescope (OLI) and a thermal imager operating in pushbroom mode TIRS
Imaging Mode PAN and MS (VIS, NIR)
Pan spectral range 503 - 676 nm
Coastal spectral range 435 - 451 nm
Blue spectral range 452 - 512 nm
Green spectral range 533 - 590 nm
Red spectral range 636 - 673 nm
NIR spectral range 851 - 879 nm
Cirrus spectral range 1363 - 1384 nm
SWIR-1 spectral range 1566 - 1651 nm
SWIR-2 spectral range 2107 - 2294 nm
TIR-1 spectral range 10600 - 11190 nm
TIR-2 spectral range 11500 - 12510 nm
Resolution Medium Resolution - 0-MR (4 - 25m)
GSD 15 m (PAN), 30m (MS, NIR, SWIR), 100m (TIR)
Dynamic Range 12-bit scaled to 16-bit integers

Table 2 - Landsat-9 OLI and TIRS sensors parameters.

Ingested format

Information extracted from product annotation included in the STAC item of a Landsat-9 dataset have a similar structure to the Landsat-8 one available here.

Product Calibration

For Landsat-9 products calibration refer to the Optical Products Calibration (OPT-Calib) service and the calibration sheet available here.