Landsat Missions
An upgrade to the Landsat archive was completed in December 2007. This resulted in changes to how Landsat scenes are identified.
All scene metadata was revised in order to assign all Landsat scenes a unique identifying code, called the Landsat Scene Identifier. Previously, scenes had an associated code, called an Entity ID, but these were not unique and were dissimilar between missions and sensors.
A major change from the Entity ID to the Landsat Scene Identifier was to include the ground station at which the data were received. For instance, data received in Kiruna, Sweden have the code KIS included in the Scene ID (e.g., LT52180142006202KIS00). The International Ground Station (IGS) Network page lists these ground station codes.
It is easy to convert the historical Entity ID to the Landsat Scene ID: