Landsat is 40 and Still Groovy.
Anonym
My colleague Chris Davis shared this video from Wired with me today. It's so much fun to watch.
I'm just getting back from the Esri International Users Conference where the 40th anniversary of Landsat (ERTS) was widely celebrated. At the imagery social on Wednesday, I even had a piece of Landsat birthday cake.
The video heralds the launch of ERTS as a new chapter in space history. For me and many of my peers Landsat was a new chapter in our geospatial science education. I'm positive Landsat MSS provided the first satellite image I saw in printed form and Landsat 5 was certainly the first digital data I analyzed in remote sensing class. At that time, Landsat had already been collecting for 20 years, yet the technology seemed so new and cutting edge. Of course, we had tools more advanced than the "Color Additive Viewer" (see the video), but nothing close to what exists today in image processing packages like ENVI.
The 40th anniversary has been a great reminder of the value of this data continuity mission. What impact has Landsat had on you during your education or career?