Example Resources:

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NASA Resources

NASA Satellite Resources

Landsat 9: Landsat 9, a partnership between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey, launched September 26, 2021, and continues the Landsat program’s critical role of monitoring, understanding, and managing the land resources needed to sustain human life. This site provides an overview of Landsat 9 mission details, instrument descriptions, spectral bands, and latest news.

Landsat 8: Landsat 8 launched on February 11, 2013, from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, on an Atlas-V 401 rocket, with the extended payload fairing from United Launch Alliance, LLC. This site provides an overview of Landsat 8 mission details, spacecraft and instrument descriptions, spectral bands, and latest news.

Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2: The NASA Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 (HLS) project provides consistent surface reflectance data from the Operational Land Imager (OLI) onboard the joint NASA/USGS Landsat 8 satellite and the MultiSpectral Instrument (MSI) onboard Europe’s Copernicus Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B satellites. The combined measurements enable global observations of the land every 2–3 days at 30-meter (m) spatial resolution. The HLS project has created seamless data products that can be used together, accounting for atmospheric correction, cloud and cloud-shadow, spatial co-registration, illumination and view angle normalization, and spectral bandpass adjustment.

Landsat Collection 2 Generation Timeline: This graphic displays the timeline of generating Level-1 and Level-2 Landsat products.

Satellite Tracking Resources

Landsat Acquisition Tool: The USGS Landsat Acquisition Tool displays the Landsat acquisition calendar and schedule of pending acquisitions. It also provides an option to convert WRS paths and rows to coordinates of latitude and longitude. The information on the website is updated daily and the calendar displays acquisition up to two days in advance.

Mapping Resources

Landsat Shapefiles and Keyhole Markup Language (KML) Files: The USGS provides Landsat shapefiles and KML files for the WRS grids. Developers will want to download the files for WRS-2 (Landsat 4 – Landsat 9) descending (daytime) files.

NASA Data Resources

Landsat Data Access: This page provides information about accessing and downloading Landsat data and science products.

USGS Landsat Collection 2: Landsat Collection 2 data, released in early 2021, marked the second major reprocessing of the Landsat archive by the U.S. Geological Survey. Collection 2 includes Level-1 data products, Level-2 science products, and U.S. Analysis Ready Data (ARD). For this challenge, the primary data product of interest is the Landsat Surface Reflectance product.

Landsat Collection 2 Surface Reflectance: The Landsat Surface Reflectance represents the amount of light reflected by Earth’s surface. Surface reflectance improves the comparison between multiple Landsat images over the same region by accounting for atmospheric effects and enhances the characterization of features and changes on Earth’s surface.

Landsat Collection 2 Metadata: Landsat data downloads include metadata files. Metadata files include important collection attributes, such as path and row information, processing level, image quality, and cloud cover. See also the Landsat Collection 2 Level 2 Guide.

Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 Data: The Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 (HLS) project provides consistent surface reflectance (SR) data from the Operational Land Imager (OLI) onboard the joint NASA/USGS Landsat 8 and Landsat 9 satellites and the Multi-Spectral Instrument (MSI) onboard Europe’s Copernicus Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B satellites. The combined measurement enables global observations of the land every 2–3 days at 30 meter (m) spatial resolution. The HLSS30 and HLSL30 products are gridded to the same resolution and Military Grid Reference System (MGRS) tiling and are “stackable” for time series analysis.

Landsat Normalized Difference Vegetation Index: The Landsat Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) is used to quantify vegetation greenness and is useful in understanding vegetation density and assessing changes in plant health.

Space Agency Partner Resources

European Space Agency (ESA)

ADAM Surface Reflectance Database: ADAM enables generating typical monthly variations of the global Earth surface reflectance at 0.1° spatial resolution (Plate Carree projection) and over the spectral range 240-4000 nm.

For additional resources you could conduct an internet search to gather relevant information that may be useful. Potential search keywords could include:

CelesTrak
Two-Line Element (TLE)
Spectator Earth
National Agriculture Imagery Program
OpenStreetMap
Google Earth Engine Data Catalog Landsat Collections
LandTrendr Pixel Time Series plotter

2024 NASA Space Apps Challenge

Landsat Reflectance Data: On the Fly and at Your Fingertips