Landsat 9

Landsat 9 carries the Thermal Infrared Sensor 2, or TIRS-2, which detects two wavelengths of thermal radiation to measure slight changes in temperature.

Under its contract with the Space Force’s Mission Manifest Office, Parsons integrated payloads for several missions including NASA and U.S. Geological Survey’s Landsat 9, which carried four cubesats from other U.S. government agencies.

Landsat 9 will house the Operational Land Imager 2 from Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colorado and the Thermal Infrared Sensor 2 from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The instruments aboard Landsat 9 are the Operational Land Imager 2 (OLI-2) and the Thermal Infrared Sensor 2 (TIRS-2).

Norway’s Svalbard satellite-monitoring ground station acquired signals from Landsat 9 about 83 minutes after launch.

NASA’s Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center in Florida managed the launch of Landsat 9.

Northrop Grumman integrated the Ball Aerospace Operational Land Imager (OLI-2) and Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS-2) instruments onto Landsat 9.

Landsat 9 is based on Northrop Grumman’s flight-proven LEOStar-3 platform.

Combined, Landsat 9 and Landsat 8 will add nearly 1,500 new scenes a day to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Landsat archive.

The Atlas V delivered Landsat 9 into a near-polar, sun-synchronous orbit around Earth.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base at 11:12 a.m. PDT on 2021-09-27 carrying NASA’s Landsat 9 and multiple smallsat payloads.

Northrop Grumman completed work on the Landsat 9 satellite at facilities in Gilbert, Arizona; San Diego, California; Commerce, California; and Goleta, California.

The Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center manages the Landsat 9 launch service.

The U.S. Geological Survey operates the Landsat 9 satellite and the mission data archive.

Landsat 9 features upgrades to its two instruments, a visible and infrared imager and a thermal infrared sensor.

Landsat 9 carries the Thermal Infrared Sensor 2 (TIRS-2), which detects thermal radiation in two wavelengths to measure Earth’s surface temperatures and changes.

The Goddard visit will emphasize climate and space technology work at NASA Goddard, including Landsat 9, the GOES series of geostationary weather satellites, and the On-orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing-1 (OSAM-1) mission under development there.

Landsat 9 imagery of the Himalayan mountains and Tibetan Plateau includes both OLI-2 multispectral views and TIRS-2 thermal data showing relative surface temperatures.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center built the TIRS-2 instrument for Landsat 9.

Landsat 9 instruments are designed to work together to capture a broad range of wavelengths by combining OLI-2 multispectral data with TIRS-2 thermal data.