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EO-1 User's Guide
Program Description
EO-1 Technology Mission (November 2000 - December 2001)
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite was launched on November 21, 2000 as part of a one-year technology validation/demonstration mission. Three sensors were carried on board EO-1: the Advanced Land Imager (ALI), Hyperion, and the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectrometer Array (LEISA) Atmospheric Corrector (LAC). The primary purpose of the ALI was to validate and test new technologies that could provide significant cost reductions and improved performance for future Landsat missions. The primary goal of Hyperion was to provide a science-grade spaceborne hyperspectral instrument, thus providing a new class of earth observation data for improved Earth surface characterization. Hyperion also supported the detailed evaluation of ALI, LAC, and cross-comparisons with Landsat 7 ETM+. The primary purpose of the LAC was to provide the first space-based test of an onboard atmospheric corrector for increasing the accuracy of surface reflectance estimates. The original EO-1 Technology Mission was completed on November 20, 2001. The technology flight and instrument validation had been very successful, and the satellite remained fully operational with three imaging sensors.
EO-1 Extended Mission (December 2001 - present)
As the end of the original EO-1 Technology Mission approached, the remote sensing research and scientific communities expressed interest in continued acquisition of Hyperion (hyperspectral) and ALI (multispectral) image data from EO-1. Recognizing the remarkable performance of the satellite's instruments, the exceptional value of the data, and the high level of user interest and willingness to assist in funding continued operations, an agreement was reached in December 2001 between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to allow continuation of the EO-1 Program as the EO-1 Extended Mission. Under this agreement, the two agencies will share responsibility for operating EO-1 on a cost-reimbursable basis as long as customer sales remain sufficient to recover flight and ground operations costs.
The EO-1 Extended Mission operates within a number of constraints imposed by its technology-pioneering origins, but also provides unique and valuable capabilities. The spacecraft can acquire a target scene three times within any 16-day period. Hyperion is also the first civilian space-borne hyperspectral imager, offering relatively low-cost imagery and potential temporal coverage that would be very difficult to obtain with airborne sensors. The ALI instrument provides multispectral data that is very comparable to that of the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) sensor onboard Landsat 7, but ALI also features enhanced spectral coverage as well as an increased spatial resolution for the panchromatic band.
The EO-1 Extended Mission is chartered to collect and distribute ALI and Hyperion products in response to customer Data Acquisition Requests (DAR). Under the Extended Mission provisions, image data acquired by EO-1 will be archived and distributed by the USGS Earth Resources Observation Systems (EROS) Data Center and placed in the public domain.
Extended Mission Goals
The primary goals of the EO-1 Extended Mission are as follows:
- Sustain and enhance USGS and NASA research and development toward applications of hyperspectral and pushbroom multispectral data within the U.S. research and operational user communities
- Promote opportunities within the remote sensing community to apply evolving imaging technology for government, scientific, and industry applications
- Provide greater insight into potential commercial developers' prototype instrument performance
- Add unique land remote sensing datasets to the USGS National Satellite Land Remote Sensing Data Archive (NSLRSDA)
- Characterize long-term performance of the EO-1 advanced technology sensors
Extended Mission Roles
NASA and the USGS are operating the EO-1 mission as efficiently as possible, using the infrastructure and operational strengths of each agency. The USGS EDC in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is responsible for acquisition scheduling, data reception, order processing, acquisition cataloging, archiving, and product distribution. The USGS will continue to maintain the entire EO-1 image collection within its long-term archive of global land data after the satellite has been decommissioned.
The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the mission and operations of the EO-1 spacecraft. NASA GSFC coordinates data collection among the network of polar and U.S. ground stations, and periodically adjusts the spacecraft orbit, ensuring that it continues to follow the same ground track as Landsat 7 (within one minute). NASA will also be responsible for deorbit activities and decommissioning of the spacecraft at the conclusion of the mission.
