Going, going, gone. Landsat reveals our shrinking world
AFTER 29 years orbiting the planet, taking 2.5m images, the longest operating satellite mission in history, is being retired by the US Geological Survey.
AFTER 29 years orbiting the planet, taking 2.5 million images, the longest operating satellite mission in history is being retired by the US Geological Survey.
Late last year the USGS announced that Landsat 5 will be decommissioned over the coming months, bringing to a close the longest-operating Earth observing satellite mission in history.
By any measure, the Landsat 5 mission has been an extraordinary success, providing unprecedented contributions to the global record of land change. The USGS has brought the aging satellite back from the brink of failure on several occasions, but the recent failure of a gyroscope has left no option but to end the mission.
Now in its 29th year of orbiting the planet, Landsat 5 has long outlived its original three-year design life.
Developed by NASA and launched in 1984, Landsat 5 has orbited the planet over 150,000 times while transmitting over 2.5 million images of land surface conditions around the world.
"This is the end of an era for a remarkable satellite, and the fact that it flew for almost three decades is a testament to the NASA engineers and the USGS team who launched it and kept it flying well beyond its expected lifetime," said Anne Castle, Department of the Interior Assistant Secretary for Water and Science.
"Any major event since 1984 that left a mark on this Earth larger than a football field was likely recorded by Landsat 5, whether it was a hurricane, a tsunami, a wildfire, deforestation, or an oil spill," said USGS Director Marcia McNutt.
For more than a quarter of a century, Landsat 5 has observed our changing planet. It has recorded the impact of natural hazards, climate variability and change, land use practices, development and urbanisation, ecosystem evolution, increasing demand for water and energy resources, and changing agricultural demands worldwide.
Vital observations of the Mount Saint Helens eruption, Antarctica, the Kuwaiti oil fires, the Chernobyl disaster, rainforest depletion, major wildfires and floods, urban growth, global crop production, and ice shelf expansion and retreat have helped increase our understanding and awareness of the impact of humans on the land.
Simon Crerar is News Limited's Visual Story Editor, follow him at twitter.com/simoncrerar
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