NASA will provide coverage of the upcoming prelaunch and launch activities for the Landsat 9 satellite, a joint NASA and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) mission that will continue the legacy of monitoring Earths land and coastal regions that began with the first Landsat satellite in 1972.
Landsat 9 is scheduled to launch at 2:11 p.m. EDT (11:11 a.m. PDT) Monday, Sept. 27, on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V 401 rocket from Space Launch Complex 3 at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
Live launch coverage will begin at 1:30 p.m. EDT (10:30 a.m. PDT), on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agencys website, with prelaunch and science briefings beginning Friday, Sept. 24.
Landsat 9 will join its sister satellite, Landsat 8, in orbit in collecting images from across the planet every eight days. This calibrated data will continue the Landsat programs critical role in monitoring the health of Earth and helping people manage essential resources, including crops, irrigation water, and forests.
Images from Landsat 9 will be added to nearly 50 years of free and publicly available data from the mission the longest data record of Earths landscapes taken from space. Landsats medium-resolution imaging capabilities allows researchers to harmonize the images to detect the footprint of human activities and their impact on our home planet over the decades.
Due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, all media participation in news conferences will be remote. A phone bridge will be provided for each briefing.
Full mission coverage is as follows (all times Eastern):
Friday, Sept. 24
1 p.m. Landsat 9 Science Briefing, with the following participants:
- Jeff Masek, Landsat 9 project scientist at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center
- Chris Crawford, Landsat 9 project scientist at USGS
- Inbal Becker-Reshef, director of NASAs Harvest food security and agriculture program
- Del Jenstrom, Landsat 9 project manager at Goddard
- Brian Sauer, Landsat 9 project manager at USGS
- Sabrina Chapman, manager, system engineering, Northrop Grumman Space Systems
- Sarah Lipscy, OLI-2 senior engineer, Ball Aerospace & Technologies
