The National Aeronautics and Space Administration EO-1 satellite was launched on November 21, 2000 as part of a one-year technology validation/demonstration mission. The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) instrument on EO-1 was used to validate and demonstrate technology for the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM). The original EO-1 Mission was successfully completed in November 2001. As the end of the Mission approached, the remote sensing research and scientific communities expressed high interest in continued acquisition of image data from EO-1. Based on this user interest and willingness to assist in funding continued operations, an agreement was reached between NASA and the United States Geological Survey to allow continuation of the EO-1 Program as an Extended Mission.

The EO-1 Extended Mission is chartered to collect and distribute ALI multispectral and Hyperion hyperspectral products in response to Data Acquisition Requests (DARs). Under the Extended Mission provisions, image data acquired by EO-1 are archived and distributed by the USGS Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) and placed in the public domain.