NASA might be better known for looking up at the stars, but the agency’s satellites have been staring down at Earth for half a century
took flight on July 23, 1972. A few years later, it would become known as Landsat 1. Still managed by NASA and the USGSLandsat Island, as photographed from a Canadian Coast Guard helicopter in 1997. “If you think back to the mid-60s, the space race was going on, the U.S. public was enamored with what was happening, and it was a unique idea to use that technology not only for military applications but to turn those cameras around and look at what’s happening on the Earth’s surface,” Sohl says.
Since 1972, nine Landsat satellites have populated Earth’s skies . Today three of them loop around the planet in polar orbits, staring at 115-mile-wide swaths of land and making highly detailed measurements. Every 16 days the same spots get another look by the same satellites. So over five decades of Earth-gazing, Landsat has compiled the most detailed record ever of our planet’s changing face., who’s been a leader of the Landsat program for decades.
In 1973 a Canadian coastal survey decided to use Landsat data to better map the country’s sparsely charted northern coasts. While inspecting the satellite’s data, Fleming spotted a telltale signature in the spectrum of light bouncing off Earth’s surface. She concluded that it came from an island, not an iceberg., the rocky atoll reflected infrared light rather than absorbing it like the surrounding seawater.
“For that one pixel, it’s a mix of water and a mix of land,” Sohl explains. “So you see a sharp contrast with the surrounding area.” In 1976 a team from the Canadian Hydrographic Service took to the skies above Northern Labrador to verify the island’s existence and fix its position on the map; after all, it had only been seen in one pixel of satellite data. About 12 miles offshore, the desolate hunk of rock protruded from the froth in an area known as
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