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What Is Landsat? 50 Years of Earth Imagery and How to Download It

Landsat has photographed the same places on Earth since 1972, and the whole archive is open to everyone.

4:22 · Published 2026-10-05

Chapters

  1. 0:00 Las Vegas and Lake Mead, 40 years apart
  2. 0:33 Fifty years in orbit
  3. 1:06 Eleven bands
  4. 1:29 What 30 meters can see
  5. 1:51 Heat: the thermal bands
  6. 2:19 One record, fifty years long
  7. 2:46 Scenes, levels and clouds
  8. 3:13 Get the scenes: the ATS Landsat Explorer
  9. 3:41 A Landsat scene in ArcGIS Pro

Transcript

Las Vegas and Lake Mead, 40 years apart (0:00)

This is Las Vegas and Lake Mead in August 1985. This is the same view 40 years later. The city has filled the valley, and the lake has pulled back from its shores. Both pictures come from one program, Landsat, and its record goes back more than 50 years. In the next five minutes you'll know how Landsat sees the ground, and how to pull its archive for your own site.

Fifty years in orbit (0:33)

Landsat is a joint mission of NASA and the United States Geological Survey. The first satellite launched in 1972. Landsat 5 flew for 29 years, a world record for an Earth-imaging satellite. Today, Landsat 8 and Landsat 9 share one orbit, 705 kilometers up. Each one sweeps a strip 185 kilometers wide, and comes back every 16 days. Flying together, they image the same place every 8 days.

Eleven bands (1:06)

Landsat 8 and 9 record 11 bands. Nine of them measure reflected light, from deep blue to short-wave infrared. Most are captured at 30 meters a pixel. A panchromatic band sharpens the detail to 15 meters. The last two bands measure heat. They sit in the thermal infrared, and they are captured at 100 meters.

What 30 meters can see (1:29)

30 meters is coarser than Sentinel-2, its sharper and newer sibling. One pixel is about the size of a baseball infield. Fields, neighborhoods, shorelines and burn scars read clearly. Single houses do not. What Landsat gives up in detail, it makes up for in time, and in heat.

Heat: the thermal bands (1:51)

The thermal bands are what set Landsat apart. Sentinel-2 has no thermal band at all. Landsat measures how hot the ground itself is, not the air above it. On a July day in Las Vegas, parking lots and rooftops run far hotter than parks and golf courses. The lake stays coolest of all. Cities use these maps to find their heat islands.

Farmers and water managers use them to estimate how much water crops are using.

One record, fifty years long (2:19)

The archive is Landsat's real value. The United States Geological Survey has reprocessed it to a single standard, called Collection 2. A pixel from 1985 can be compared with a pixel from today. That is how scientists measure change over decades, not seasons: glaciers, forests, cities and water. No commercial satellite can sell you yesterday from 40 years ago.

Scenes, levels and clouds (2:46)

Landsat scenes are cut on a fixed grid of paths and rows, called the Worldwide Reference System. One scene covers about 185 kilometers on a side. Level-2 products have the atmosphere corrected out. You get surface reflectance for the light bands, and surface temperature from the thermal band. Every scene carries a cloud score. And the whole archive has been open to everyone since 2008.

Get the scenes: the ATS Landsat Explorer (3:13)

This is the ATS Landsat Explorer. Search a place, set a date range and a cloud limit, and every matching pass comes back. Lock a pass, and the map holds that one date. Open the Showcase, load Lake Mead, and swipe two dates across the shoreline. When you want the pixels, download every Level-2 band as a GeoTIFF, or just your area.

The full walkthroughs are linked in the description.

A Landsat scene in ArcGIS Pro (3:41)

Here is a downloaded scene in ArcGIS Pro. Each Level-2 band opens as its own GeoTIFF, ready for any analysis. 50 years of record, 11 bands, and a new look every 8 days. That is Landsat, and it has been watching your site since before you thought to ask.

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