As the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) took command of Landsat 8 yesterday, USGS and NASA officials stressed that planning already is underway for follow-on satellites.   NASA’s Mike Freilich vowed that the agencies will pursue a “sustained and sustainable” program for obtaining Landsat-like data for decades to come.

Landsat 8 is the most recent in a 40-year series of satellites collecting medium-resolution imagery of the Earth’s surface.  The program has had a tortuous path since the first five were built and launched by NASA in the 1970s and early 1980s.   An effort to privatize Landsat in the Carter and Reagan Administrations failed as did the launch of Landsat 6.  The program was brought back into the government under the joint auspices of NASA and DOD, but DOD withdrew, leaving NASA to pay for Landsat 7 and Landsat 8 (formerly the Landsat Data Continuity Mission),   Meanwhile, USGS took responsibility for operating the satellites once in orbit in addition to its long-standing role in disseminating the data from the Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center in Sioux Falls, SD.  In 2008, the decision was made to make the data available for free, dramatically increasing its utilization.

The Obama Administration wanted USGS to take over responsibility for the Landsat program in its entirety, including funding future satellites, but Congress said no because it was concerned the costs would overwhelm other USGS priorities.   In the FY2014 budget request, the Administration is proposing that NASA take the lead in ensuring there is no break in the 40-year (to date) continuous data set provided by Landsat satellites.

At a press conference at the EROS center yesterday marking USGS assuming control of Landsat 8, USGS Associate Director for Climate and Land Use Matt Larsen said the FY2014 budget request demonstrates that the Obama Administration “fully supports an ongoing, sustained Landsat program.”    

Freilich went further, emphasizing that the Administration is “committed to a sustained and sustainable global land imaging program” that will “draw upon the ideas and approaches that the NASA and USGS team, singular, working together have developed… as we engineer over the next several months the plan for this sustainable, multi-decadal program.”   Future satellites will have “at least the capabilities that Landsat 7 and now Landsat 8 are providing,” he added.

Acting USGS Director Suzette Kimball noted that it is a significant change to move from a program that has existed one satellite at a time to a “programmatic focus” where they are working not just on Landsat 9, but “to continue this decades into the future.”

Freilich said NASA and USGS already have held discussions and identified people to serve on a steering committee to determine how to proceed with the future of the program.

Landsat 8 was launched in February.  It has been undergoing an on-orbit checkout phase under NASA’s direction for the past three months, but yesterday moved into its operational phase with USGS now in control.

NOTE:  USGS has clarified that the press conference is at 1:30 pm Central Time (2:30 pm Eastern).

Landsat 8 officially becomes operational today as the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) takes over operations from NASA.  The satellite was launched in February.

NASA launched the first Landsat (then called ERTS-1) in 1972.   Subsequent satellites have provided a continuous stream of land remote sensing imagery that is maintained at and distributed for free by the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center in Sioux Falls, SD.   

A press conference is scheduled there today at 1:30 pm Central Time (2:30 pm Eastern) to mark the handover of operations.  Participants include:

• Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD)
• Mike Freilich, NASA Earth Science Division Director
• Suzette Kimball, USGS Acting Director
• Colleen Hartman, NASA-Goddard Deputy Director for Science, Operations and Performance Management
• Frank Kelly, EROS Director

NASA referred to the satellite prior to launch as the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM), but its official name now is Landsat 8.  NASA built and launched Landsat 8; USGS only operates it, as well as Landsat 7, which was launched in 1999 and is still functioning although a line scan error problem means a loss of 22 percent of data on each image.

The Obama Administration wanted to transfer the entire Landsat program to USGS, but Congress said no because of concern that the funding requirements would overwhelm other USGS priorities.  In the FY2014 budget request, the Administration is proposing that NASA take the lead in ensuring continuity of this type of data.

NOAA announced today that it has reactivated GOES-13, but only to allow engineers to troubleshoot what happened to the spacecraft on May 22.   GOES-14, an on-orbit spare, will continue to fill in for GOES-13 in an operational capacity.

Three Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) are in geostationary orbit, a particularly good vantage point for studying the development of tropical storms.  Two are maintained in an operational mode — designated GOES-East and GOES-West for the geographical areas of the United States and nearby waters they observe — while the third is a spare, ready to be moved into position if either fails.  GOES-13 is in the GOES-East position (75 degrees West longitude), GOES-15 in the GOES-West position (135 degrees W), and GOES-14 is the spare, positioned in between them at 105 degrees W.

On May 22, GOES-13 stopped producing imaging and sounding data.  NOAA put the satellite into storage mode and activated GOES-14.  The decision to reactivate GOES-13 now is to allow engineers to analyze spacecraft and instrument data to determine the source of a change in motion that caused the instruments to automatically shut down.  If the spacecraft cannot be recovered, NOAA will move GOES-14 into the 75 degrees W orbital slot to ensure coverage of severe weather that could impact the East Coast.

This is the second GOES-13 service interruption.  GOES-14 took over temporarily for GOES-13 last September as well, but engineers were able to get GOES-13 working again after several weeks.

The Obama Administration’s new STEM education strategy, which would move many NASA education activities to other agencies, will be explained to the House Science, Space and Technology Committee next week.

The White House proposal, included in its FY2014 budget request, to restructure the government’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education programs is very controversial in the space community.    Under the Obama plan, STEM programs in 13 agencies would be consolidated into three: the National Science Foundation (NSF) for activities aimed at undergraduate and graduate students, the Department of Education for K-12 students, and the Smithsonian Institution for informal and in-situ education.

Many of NASA’s STEM and Education and Public Outreach (EPO) activities would be reassigned to one of those agencies.  NASA would retain control of four programs aimed at special groups (MUREP, Space Grant, EPSCoR, and GLOBE), but other programs would be dispersed to the other agencies or NASA offices would have to compete for any funds that remain in NASA’s Office of Education.   In NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD), 1 percent of each project’s cost must be set aside for EPO activities related to that project, but under the new plan, that funding would no longer be under SMD control.   Many in the space science community argue that they would not be willing to volunteer their time to work with students through the EPO efforts if they are managed by the Department of Education, for example, since that department lacks expertise in space science specifically and STEM generally.

The hearing on June 4, 2013 at 2:00 pm ET in 2318 Rayburn features three witnesses to explain the proposal:

• John Holdren, Director, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Science Adviser to the President
• Joan Ferrini-Mundy, Assistant Director, Directorate for Education and Human Resources, NSF
• Leland Melvin, Associate Administrator for Education, NASA

The NOAA Satellite and Information Service posted a notice on its Facebook page this morning announcing that the GOES-14 satellite is now online to replace GOES-13, which failed on Tuesday.  Efforts continue to fix GOES-13.

GOES-13 failed last year and was temporarily replaced by GOES-14, an on-orbit spare that is in place for just such an eventuality.  NOAA uses two geostationary satellites, dubbed GOES-East and GOES-West because of their geographical positions, as part of its weather satellite system that also includes polar orbiting satellites.  NOAA posted imagery on Facebook of the May 20 devastating Oklahoma tornado taken by GOES-13 before the satellite failed.

NOAA strives to have spare satellites already in orbit ready to take over if one of its operational satellites fails.  GOES-13 was launched in 2006 and was itself a spare until it was placed into the GOES-East position in 2010.  GOES-14 was launched in 2009.   GOES-15 is the operational GOES-West satellite.   NOAA is developing a new generation of geostationary satellites, designated “GOES-R,” with the first launch scheduled for 2015.

NOAA engineers were able to restore GOES-13 to service last year, and GOES-14 returned to its spare status.   As of this morning, GOES-14 is back on duty while GOES-13 is in storage mode.