NASA Poised to Launch Powerful New Earth-Watching Satellite Monday

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NASA is gearing up for the Monday (Feb. 11) launch of an Earth-observation satellite that will continue a celebrated 40-year project to monitor our planet's surface from space.
The Landsat Data Continuity Mission is slated to blast off Monday at 1:02 p.m. EST (1802 GMT/10:02 a.m. PST) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The LDCM satellite is the eighth overall in the Landsat program, which has been scrutinizing Earth from orbit continuously since Landsat 1 launched in 1972.
Mission team members call LDCM the most advanced and capable Landsat spacecraft ever built. It should help the United States and other nations around the world monitor environmental change and better manage their natural resources, they say.
"LDCM will continue to describe the human impact on Earth and the impact of Earth on humanity, which is vital for accommodating seven billion people on our planet," LDCM project manager Ken Schwer, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., told reporters today (Feb. 8) during a prelaunch press briefing. [Photos: The Next Landsat Earth-Observing Spacecraft]
The $855 million LDCM mission is a collaboration between NASA and the United States Geological Survey, which will take over operations after the spacecraft's launch and initial checkouts. At that point, the satellite will be renamed Landsat 8.

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