Brian Dunbar

Headquarters, Washington, D.C. May 20,

1994
(Phone: 202/358-1547)

Randee Exler
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
(Phone: 301/286-0697)

RELEASE No.: 94-78

NASA TAKES OVER LANDSAT 7 DEVELOPMENT CONTRACT

NASA officials announced today that the agency had assumed the
satellite-development contract for Landsat 7 from the Department
of Defense (DoD). The contract with Martin Marietta Astro Space,
Valley Forge, Pa., will now be managed by NASA's Goddard Space
Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, Md.

Landsat 7 will provide essential land remote-sensing data

critical to understanding environmental change and will support a
broad range of other important Earth science and Earth-resource
applications. The Landsat program has provided more than 20 years
of calibrated data to a broad user community of resource managers,
global-change researchers, state and local governments, commercial
users and the military. Landsat data have been used, for example,
to refine estimates of deforestation in the Amazon Basin.

NASA assumes satellite development following the

Administration's reevaluation of the program, led by the Office of
Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Under the existing joint
program office, DOD had primary responsibility for satellite
development and launch, and NASA had primary responsibility for
the ground system and data distribution.

The new program was implemented May 5 under a Presidential

Decision Directive signed by President Clinton. NASA will have
responsibility for development and launch of the satellite. The
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA
will jointly develop the ground system, which NOAA will operate.
The Earth Resource Observation Satellites (EROS) Data Center,
Sioux Falls, S.D., of the Department of Interior's U.S. Geological
Survey (USGS) will continue to be responsible for maintaining the
government's archive of Landsat and other related remotely sensed
data.

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The existing program was reevaluated after changing national

security concerns led to DOD's determination that Landsat 7 would
not meet its needs. DOD's withdrawal from the program, together
with the failure of NOAA's Landsat 6 to reach orbit in October
1993 and the advanced age of Landsats 4 and 5, led the
Administration to reassess the program.

The outcome of the OSTP's assessment is a new strategy designed

to continue the Landsat program and extend the 20-year Landsat
data set. The estimated cost of the restructured program
(development and operations), including $230 million already
spent, is $754.7 million, about $125 million less than the joint
NASA-DOD program. Launch of Landsat 7 is planned for December
1998.

Landsat 7 is expected to be the functional equivalent of NOAA's

Landsat 6, with enhancements to the spacecraft. Landsat 6 carried
an Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM), which would have provided
images of the Earth's surface with resolution as good as
approximately 15 meters (50 feet) in one band plus 30 metters (100
feet) resolution in six bands covering the visible, near and
short-wave infrared regions. Landsat 7 will carry an ETM-Plus,
under development by Hughes Santa Barbara Research Center, Calif.,
which will provide modest improvements over Landsat 6, primarily
in instrument calibration and accuracy.

Landsat 6 was intended to replace the existing Landsats 4 and

5. Launched in 1982 and 1984 respectively, Landsats 4 and 5 are
operating well beyond their three-year design lives, and represent
the only source of global, calibrated high spatial resolution
measurements of the Earth's surface that can be compared to
previous data records.
 Landsat 7 is part of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth (MTPE),
dedicated to studying how our global environment is changing.
Using the unique perspective available from space, NASA is
observing, monitoring and assessing large-scale environmental
processes, with an emphasis on climate change. MTPE satellite
data, complemented by aircraft and ground data, are enabling us to
better understand environmental changes, to determine how human
activities have contributed to these changes and to understand
the consequences of such changes. MTPE data, which NASA is
distributing to researchers worldwide, are essential to humans
making informed decisions about protecting their environment.

The Landsat 7 spacecraft development is managed by GSFC for

NASA's Office of Mission to Planet Earth, Washington, D.C.

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