LDCM
Full Name: Landsat Data Continuity Mission
Phase: Under study
Launch Date: December 01, 2012
Mission Project Home Page: http://ldcm.nasa.gov/
Program(s): Earth Systematic Missions
For more than 30 years, Landsat satellites have collected data of the Earth's continental surfaces to support global change research and applications. This data constitutes the longest continuous record of the Earth's surface as seen from space. By imaging Earth's land environment at a resolution sufficient to record the impacts of human activities, Landsat provides an important complement to U.S. global imagers such as MODIS, MISR, and AVHRR. The first satellite in the Landsat family, Landsat 1, was launched in 1972. The most recent, Landsat 7, was launched in April 1999 and continues to collect data. Because its design lifetime is five years, the next Landsat satellite system needs to launched as soon as possible in order to minimize risks to data continuity.
The Land Remote Sensing Policy Act of 1992 directs the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to assess various system development and management options for a satellite system to succeed Landsat 7. NASA and USGS are working together on the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) to meet this goal, and to ensure continued collection of Landsat data. In addition to the primary goal of maintaining "data continuity with the Landsat system," the Land Remote Sensing Policy Act of 1992 set two additional goals for LDCM. They are to serve "the civilian, national security, commercial, and foreign policy interests of the United States," and to "incorporate system enhancements... which may potentially yield a system that is less expensive to build and operate and more responsive to users."
The 1992 Act expressed a preference for "private-sector funding and management". To that end, NASA and USGS pursued a private-public partnership for procuring LDCM data, and awarded study phase contracts to two commercial companies (DigitalGlobe and Resource21) during 2002. NASA cancelled the final Request for Proposal (RFP) on September 26, 2003, following an evaluation of the responses to the solicitation. NASA decided that awarding a contract was not in the best interest of the U.S. Government on the basis of proposal evaluations. Since that time, other options for implementing LDCM have been under consideration.
On August 5, 2004, a Request for Information (RFI) was issued to solicit information on innovative approaches for the development and incorporation of a new Operational Land Imager and also for a potential stand-alone mission. All the RFI documents can be found at this web site under procurement or at the NASA Acquisition Internet Service.
One of the key objectives of LDCM is to make all Landsat-type data available at affordable cost. This will enable the many different sectors of the population - farmers, school children, business leaders, scientists, state and federal governments and many others to continue to utilize this data for high quality research and applications.