Landsat 7 Science Data Users Handbook - Home

Foreword

The purpose of the Landsat program is to provide the world's scientists and application engineers with a continuing stream of remote sensing data for monitoring and managing the Earth's resources. Landsat 7 is the latest NASA satellite in a series that has produced an uninterrupted multispectral record of the Earth's land surface since 1972. Along with data acquisition and the USGS archival and distribution systems, the program includes the data processing techniques required to render the Landsat 7 data into a scientifically useful form. Special emphasis has been placed on periodically refreshing the global data archive, maintaining an accurate instrument calibration, providing data at reasonable prices, and creating a public domain level one processing system that creates high level products of superior quality.

The Landsat 7 Science Data User's Handbook is a living document prepared by the Landsat Project Science Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Its purpose is to provide a basic understanding of the joint NASA/USGS Landsat 7 program and to serve as a comprehensive resource for the Landsat 7 spacecraft, its payload, the ground processing system, and methodologies for rendering Landsat 7 data into a form suitable for science.

** The Landsat 7 Science Data User's Handbook now allows users to view acronym meanings by scrolling their mouse over the acronym in the text. After a second or two and the expanded text will appear. (ex. NASA)

- Download a PDF of the Landsat Science Data Users Handbook (10.15 MB)