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Landsat 8 Satellite Successfully Launches Into Orbit
New adosch writes "The Landsat Data Continuity Mission is now in orbit, after launching Monday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Calif. After about three months of testing, the U.S. Geological Survey will take control and the mission, renamed Landsat 8, will extend more than 40 years of global land observations critical to energy and water management, forest monitoring, human and environmental health, urban planning, disaster recovery, and agriculture."
We still need more new observation satellites to avoid losing Earth observing capabilities as the work horses of the NASA/USGS fleet die of old age.
tell me I read wrong elsewhere, but why is it only designed for 5 years of service and 10 years of life?
Does this mean there are other sats that do light duty work on the project? How much do they contribute? What is the distinction that decides which are the 'workhorse' sats?
Do these satellites have the ability to deorbit? Or when they die do they become more permanent space junk?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The price of tinfoil hats just doubled.
These satellites are used for water management, agriculture and many other things that are vital infrastructure. As an example, my state uses LandSAT data to estimate water use by using the thermal maps LandSAT produces and from this can make fairly accurate predictions of actual water use and resulting draw down of critical reservoirs.
It's also a huge issue as right now there is going to be a gap of about 2 years when one of the sats dies and before it's replacement gets up and it's going to get worse as more of the aging sats die. This is one of those aspects of government spending that is critical in many ways and will be severely damaged by government spending cuts. The amount of money these programs occupy is miniscule compared against their benefit.
Playing with tapes from EROS on the Cray/CDC machines at U of Mn in the early 70s. Great fun.
After the questionable publicity we received in this morning's story about the RIOT program, I would like to point out that we are also responsible for producing the world's best focal planes, some of which have gone into these Landsat birds, including this one.
Billions of dollars and they last five years. Something tells me that if Washington got out of the satellite business entirely, weather.com and partners would launch a sat with a 20 year service life that cost less than $100 million.
Then, the Google Earth crew would look at the Google Fiber team and say "if they can offer 700 mbps for $70, what can we do with satellites?" Maybe they'd launch a rocket carrying 50 mini-sats that together provided ten times better coverage than the 1960s style Landsats that the government is still launching.
Sometimes government research into new technology is good. For only a few billion dollars, DARPA created what would later become the internet. Speeds up to 300 bps in the government version. Then companies took it to 700000000 bps, after building the web atop the old gopher-carrying net.
Satellites aren't a top secret research project anymore. That's no reason for all the waste and inefficiency of government these days. The news channels and other users will buy satellite feeds from someone - if the need is there, that's a market, and a market will always attract suppliers.
and the other planets are reading warmer too. I wonder if that 0.001 degree temperature difference is attracting asteroids from millions of miles away.
Then companies took it to 700000000 bps, after building the web atop the old gopher-carrying net.
Using lines laid with public dollars, and protected with limited monopolies. Also, often building off research done at public universities, with government grant money.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Yes, if we just get all that useless government out of the way of the benevolent corporations we could all be living the life of the Jetsons in no time. Back to the glorious economy of the Victorian era! By all the gods, what kind of frelling hellhole of a world do you want to live in?
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
But having said that:
For 2013, Russia has pledged to spend more than 7 times NASA's budget on space.
What is our government doing?
The web was not invented by private corporations. Without the special right of way grants, the corporate world wouldn't have been able to do anything with the internet. Without the DARPA work, the internet would closer resemble Tymenet and Compu$erve and yes, you would likely have to pay for it by the minute. There would likely be 3 competing services, all incompatible and with no hope of interconnection. Each would reserve the right to remove any content they didn't like from their servers. YOU wouldn't have a server but they might let you rent space on theirs if you had big bux.
You might ask how I know that. I know because that's exactly what they developed before the internet came along and ate their lunch. They tried to keep their expensive walled gardens going as long as they could, eventually even grudgingly offering internet connectivity in a last ditch effort to keep people from leaving in droves, but they just didn't have a clue how to add enough value to be worth paying a premium over regular dial-up providers.
The market was clearly there, it took off like wild fire. But nobody was going to take the first step until DARPA and later, public universities stepped in. Untill the FCC spoke up, AT&T wasn't even going to allow the use of a modem on a phone line.
If weather.com and co can do so much better for so much less, why haven't they? It's not like there isn't demand for additional satellite data.
I believe in competition and a well regulated market, but sometimes the market really isn't the answer. It either needs to be kicked off by fiat or, in some cases, simply won't happen. Often it needs a viable public option to keep it honest.
So what you're pointing out is that Compuserve et al provided email, live chat, et. years before darpa had the brilliant idea that one military base could dial another with a modem. Further, you say, Compuserve was competing with Tymenet, Prodigy, etc. to see who could provide the best services at the best price. Becuase most internet technology was all invented by private companies, the government should run more things. Did I get that right?
Hmm, you did mention walled gardens, a phrase normally applied to Apple. I suppose Compuserve vs. Prodigy vs. AOL vs. Delphi vs. Bix WAS a little bit like Apple vs. Android, except that there were a lot more than two players. I guess you're cheering government intervention versus competition, so you'd prefer that instead of Apple and Android competing, the government should just mandate that we all use WIndows?
As an aerospace engineer who worked on this program for two years, this post made me audibly laugh out loud. Good thing no one takes you serious.