NASA successfully launches newest Landsat satellite

Space.com : On 11 February, NASA launched the Landsat Data Continuity Mission aboard an Atlas V rocket. It is the eighth satellite of the 41-year-old joint NASA and US Geological Survey (USGS) Landsat program, which monitors a wide range of Earth environmental conditions and human impact ranging from glacial retreat to urban sprawl. After the satellite reaches a 705-km-high polar orbit and its functionality is checked out by NASA, it will be handed over to the USGS and will be renamed Landsat 8. It will collect images in the visible, near-IR, and shortwave-IR wavelengths with a spatial resolution of 30 m and will record surface temperature measurements. It will join Landsat 7, the only other currently operational Landsat satellite, which was launched in 1999 and should remain operational until 2016. Although each of the satellites can fully image Earth every 16 days, together they will reduce that time by half.