PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
November 2014
1015
PROFESSIONAL
INSIGHT
and Resources Inventory Surveys Through Aerospace
Remote Sensing. In 1974, the CIA started using Landsat
data to monitor Russian crops.
• Finding Virginia Norwood! She is the engineer who
designed the original multispectral digital scanner.
USGS Cartographer Alden Colvocoresses initially dis-
missed the MSS instrument as “a little mirror in space”.
After the launch, he quickly voiced his admiration
when he pronounced, upon seeing his first MSS image,
“Gentlemen, that’s a map.” He wrote a letter to Virginia
Norwood telling her what an amazing instrument it was
and we have the letter.
• EOSAT didn’t raise the prices for the Landsat data,
NOAA did! They were mandated to recover operating
costs.
Why is Landsat and your project documenting it so
important?
Landsat is the longest continuous land surface observation of
Earth from space, 1972 to the present. When NASA performs
a mission, they typically do it to prove something can be
done then move on to something else. Landsat continues to
provide us with valuable information. When most satellite
programs have a beginning, middle, and an end, Landsat has
no end, at least not yet. Also, the “granddaddy” of all digital
Earth observing sensors was on Landsat 1, the original MSS,
Multispectral Scanner System.
Landsat could have died off a long time ago. There wouldn’t
have been a Landsat 3 if it hadn’t been for supporters
like Robert Allnutt, academic researchers, government
agencies, resource analysts, oil and mineral companies, the
military, public planners, and a large variety of data users
who advocated to keep it going because of how valuable the
data were. It’s a challenge to maintain such a program but
Landsat is a public good. We want posterity to understand
the importance of this.
What are the goals of the project?
To write and publish a book on the technical history of
Landsat. Telling the story of what it takes technically and
programmatically to bring about a systematic program to
study the Earth and demonstrate the need for and value
of observations acquired to monitor change on the Earth’s
surface. We are also gathering and preserving oral histories
from Landsat veterans, historical gray literature, and other
Landsat documents.
Is the international community contributing to this project?
Landsat has always had International Cooperators and
they have contributed indirectly to our efforts. Their major
contribution has been to help fill the gaps in our Landsat
USGS Archive holdings with data from their international
stations. The Landsat program has met with its international
cooperators at least twice yearly and documentation from
these meetings has been very helpful to our research, as
have various theses and papers written by international
authors. In the 1970s, Landsat helped explain the new open
skies policy for data from space and break down barriers of
mistrust. It has been a useful tool to the State Department,
USAID, the World Bank in their missions and projects
around the world.
In February 2005, the Legacy archive database infrastruc-
ture was completed and 172 initial donors were invited to
register documents. How were these individuals picked?
The Landsat Science Office provided the initial list of import-
ant people associated with Landsat. We contacted them and
asked them to donate documents and identify other people
who would help us with the project.
A way to categorize information is essential for any suc-
cessful archive. How has this problem been resolved for
an archive as vast as this one?
We are all LPSO members, scientists and civil servants, not
historians or librarians. The Goddard Library was indis-
pensable in defining 190 terms to be used as the Landsat
Controlled Vocabulary, keywords used to better categorize
the documentation. Jim Storey, Rich Irish, Steve Covington,
John Barker, and the Legacy team helped review the con-
trolled vocabulary that the team established by broadening
terms available in the “Goddard Core”, keywords used by
the Goddard Library.
861 documents, mostly gray literature that were going to
be thrown away, were received, categorized, and registered.
What makes a Landsat Veteran and what was their reaction
to the Project?
A Landsat veteran is a person whose career was defined by
the mission. People who are bit by the Landsat bug and have a
passion for it. One early Landsat manager showed up with his
project notebooks. Using his notes, we were able to determine
that the Landsat 1 spacecraft was built in about two years.
“The beauty of the Landsat data is that it
can be a pretty picture or it can be a highly
calibrated scientific datum that proves a point
or provides a measurement…and everything
in between.”
“Landsat Veteran Bob Porter used this logic
when talking to the international community:
‘How many satellites passed over your
country yesterday? How many of them asked
your permission? You can get these pictures,
but can you get those?’”
