"Landsat is a critical asset, " said US space agency (Nasa) project scientist Dr Jim Irons.
The USGS recently decided to retire its Landsat 5 satellite after nearly 30 years in service.
The newest Landsat is equipped with sensors that are more powerful than its predecessors.
We've generated maps using Landsat imagery which have predicted areas we never thought suitable for this bird.
Images courtesy NASA GSFC Scientific Visualization Studio and Landsat 7 Project Science Office.
Since the first Landsat launch in 1972, the satellites have been key witnesses to history, documenting the 1980 Mount St.
Through the decades, the Landsat satellites have monitored drought conditions, global crop output, shrinking glaciers and the effects of urban sprawl.
The Landsat program is managed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey, which has been distributing the data for free since 2008.
Landsat-8 is more formally called the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM).
PRODES, relies mainly on Landsat, an American satellite which provides colour images of great detail (each pixel represents 30 metres on the ground).
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While Landsat 7 continues to provide daily observations, a problem with one of its instruments has cut the amount of data it can gather.
It saw the Landsat-8 mission hurtle skywards on an Atlas rocket from the US Air Force base at Vandenberg shortly after 10:00 local time (18:00 GMT).
This record has been obtained and continuously updated by sensors onboard a series of land-imaging satellites that began with the launch of Landsat 1 in 1972.
One of uses best known to the general public will be on their phones and computers through Google, which incorporates Landsat data into its Earth and Maps applications.
Even with Landsat, it is as if each satellite was born an only child, and the next mission had to fight for justification as if there had been no heritage.
Nasa, USGS and the Federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) are now seeking a long-term solution that would see Landsat-9 and all following spacecraft arrive on a predictable track.
After a three-month checkout phase, day-to-day operations will be turned over to the U.S. Geological Survey, which intends to make images and data free on the Internet as in previous Landsat missions.
The Landsat satellite was boosted into orbit by an Atlas V rocket shortly before 11:30 a.m. local time, more than an hour after lifting off from Vandenberg Air Force Base under mostly clear skies.
At the end of this year, the European Space Agency will start to roll out the multi-billion-euro Sentinel fleet of satellites, which aim to echo the Landsat philosophy but with many more types of sensor.
"Landsat is a centerpiece of NASA's Earth Science program, and today's successful launch will extend the longest continuous data record of Earth's surface as seen from space, " NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement.
The technology processes remote-sensing data, including data from the LANDSAT and RADAR satellites, in combination with ground truth data provided by a ground penetrating radar and other information drawn from geological, hydrogeological, geographical, hydrological and climate data and, when dealing with deep aquifers, seismological data.
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