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End of an Era: Landsat 7 Decommissioned After 25 Years of Earth Observation
- gnabgib 1y agoRelated: End of an era: Landsat 7 mission takes final images (273 points, 8 months ago, 48 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41663465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41663465
- mceoin 1y agoWe're reaching a history / pre-history moment where the entire earth's history will be available as a high definition orb with video feed, scrollable through time.
- perihelions 1y ago[flagged]
- appointment 1y agoThe climate truths remain inconvenient.
- Rebelgecko 1y agoTrump is trying to kill it, but at the end of the day congress decides how much they want to incorporate the president's request into the budget. They were pretty happy to ignore them in the past so I wouldn't be surprised if that streak continues, with some token cuts.
- jmclnx 1y ago>They were pretty happy to ignore them in the past Sad to say, with that budget bill waiting to be pass, this time I thing you may be wrong. In any case Trump is ignoring what Congress passed in the past and even now, I doubt that will change. (I really hope you are right)
- wat10000 1y agoThe way things are right now, the president decides how much he wants to actually spend out of what Congress allocates. It doesn't matter if Congress funds Landsat Next, if the administration refuses to spend that money.
- jmclnx 1y ago[flagged]
- ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago[flagged]
- jvanderbot 1y agoI'm a LANDSAT fan to the extreme. But I suspect that Planet will step up and provide a (subscription based) alternative, at zero up-front cost to the US Government. Over short time horizons, this is cheaper. Over long ones ... who knows?
- larrled 1y agoThe “Planet” being L3harris/peter theill?
- jvanderbot 1y agohttps://www.planet.com/ https://www.planet.com/
- larrled 1y ago[flagged]
- robocat 1y agoI couldn't find anything that suggests where their major profits (≈ major income) would come from. I assume finance: Hedge funds? Insurance industry? Are government and science users just secondary sources of income?
- jvanderbot 1y agoI'm fairly sure government is a primary consumer, up there with hedge fund types. They do some primary analysis, but the big market is in "processed" data, if I understand it correctly, so people will buy this data wholesale, hook up a subscription API, and feed it directly into their analysis pipelines. https://www.planet.com/company/customer-stories/ https://www.planet.com/company/customer-stories/
- notahacker 1y agoGovernment users includes the defence sector...
- larrled 1y agoMaybe it could be a boon to the sentinel program in the same way as the current administration strengthened the European defense posture, by weakening our own. If that happens it could actually be good, because America military will no doubt spend as much as it can on science as soon as they get debt back under control. Sadly that seems like it won’t happen in 2025, but with enough growth maybe by 2030 we’ll be back, and better.
- jvanderbot 1y agoLandsat is one of those (for now, bygone) projects that the US Gov (and EU!) ran to the benefit of basically everyone. Imagine the benefit for any kind of land planning to have access to this data. USGS.gov has tons of soil and topology data, thanks in large part to this program, and essentially free for all. Other programs we just never think about include NOAA state of the art weather from which all "local weather" is possible, free and open air navigation charts, and free air traffic control. Think about how, scattered across the entire continental USA, there are a dense network of radio towers broadcasting homing signals so that any aircraft can navigate safely without subscription or cost. And then of course we have GPS. It's just unbelievable the things we've built and essentially given away for the benefit of humanity. Apolitically, I look forward to an era where we can do that again (without living on borrowed time, if possible).
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- larrled 1y agoMost innovation is military innovation, if only by proxy.
- tonyhart7 1y ago*military and space
- Moto7451 1y agoThe latter often is just for the former but with some PR. Not all but a significant amount. The first US and Soviet astronauts were flying ICBMs. Hubble is leftover spy satellite gear and two more leftover similar satellites were gifted to NASA in recent history. The Space Shuttle was intended to capture foreign satellites for the CIA. The Soviet Union had small space stations that carried cannons. And of course, we both nuked space just to make sure that worked. Clearly we do a lot more commercial space at this point but the lineage is there.
- pqdbr 1y agoI don't understand this: article states it will drift as space debris for 55 years (!) before reentering the atmosphere? Why isn't this done immediately by just lowering it's orbit even further and letting it burn? > The final steps included carefully lowering the satellite's orbit to decrease the risk of collisions and ensuring that all energy sources, such as fuel and batteries, are depleted to prevent the satellite from accidentally turning back on or creating debris. As Landsat 7 begins this decommissioned phase, it will drift silently in orbit for about 55 years before reentering Earth’s atmosphere.
- sidewndr46 1y agoyou would need to carry enough fuel on board to get rid of most of the velocity obtained during orbital insertion. That is lots of fuel
- perihelions 1y ago> "Why isn't this done immediately by just lowering it's orbit even further and letting it burn?" It'd take a very significant and expensive amount of fuel to "just lower" the orbit! From its 700 km orbit, it'd cost (by my estimate) roughly 300 m/s, or on the order of 10% of entire satellite mass, to perform this lowering burn. It's not at all standard practice to deliberately dispose of satellites this way (SpaceX is a major outlier), and wasn't even on the radar in the 1990's, when this satellite was being built. (Here's an anchoring point: the projected cost for the propulsion to "just" deorbit the International Space Station, at the end of its operating life, is $1.5 billion [0]). [0] https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/nasa-iss-deorbit-vehicle-will-cost-1-5-billion-but-its-essential/ https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/nasa-iss-deorbit-vehicle-...
- bmacho 1y ago> (Here's an anchoring point: the projected cost for the propulsion to "just" deorbit the International Space Station, at the end of its operating life, is $1.5 billion [0]). That's under 2% of the total cost, that's not too much, if you compare it to the rest of the TCO, and not how beneficial would it be.
- wffurr 1y agoI loved how early Landsat imagery featured in the movie Kong: Skull Island about finding a mysterious lost island in the Pacific.
- tinyplanets 1y agoOff topic to the thread, but that was a surprisingly good movie!
- Animats 1y agoOh, good, there's still Landsat 8 and 9 working. The title suggested that perhaps this was part of a plan to cut down observations of climate change.
- mturmon 1y agonot so good, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44190279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44190279
- wewewedxfgdf 1y agoDo these things continue to do their work, picturing and transmitting data, even after being decommissioned? Or do they need constant human attention and thus go silent?
- followben 1y agoIn 1990 I was super excited to have my high school work experience application accepted to CSIRO in Macquarie Park, only to find when I turned up that I’d spend the whole boring week cataloging magnetic tape from these dull satellites Landsat 4 & 5. The only time my greybeard supervisor seemed remotely animated was when he started imagining what imagery 6 & 7 would send back. How wrong I was; what this now greybeard wouldn’t give to rummage through that lab again. RIP #7.
- Waterluvian 1y agoAww. That was a primary source of data for my undergrad and grad studies of geography. Everyone remembers their first false colour composite. Seeing the vegetation just pop. Then you’re hooked.
- jgalt212 1y agoThat side by side image of Vegas shows they've shrugged off all the losses of the GFC.