, "The Mother of Landsat", designed the multispectral scanner. In 1965,
William T. Pecora, the then director of the
United States Geological Survey (USGS), proposed the idea of a
remote sensing satellite program to gather facts about our planet's natural resources. Pecora stated that the program was "conceived in 1966 largely as a direct result of the demonstrated utility of the
Mercury and
Gemini orbital photography to Earth resource studies." While weather satellites had been monitoring Earth's atmosphere since 1960 and were largely considered useful, there was no appreciation of terrain data from space until the mid-1960s. So, when Landsat 1 was proposed, it met with intense opposition from the
Bureau of Budget and those who argued that high-altitude aircraft would be the fiscally responsible choice for Earth remote sensing. Concurrently, the
Department of Defense feared that a civilian program such as Landsat would compromise the secrecy of its
reconnaissance missions. Additionally, there were
geopolitical concerns about photographing foreign countries without permission. In 1965, NASA began methodical investigations of Earth remote sensing using instruments mounted on planes. In 1966, the USGS convinced the
Secretary of the Interior,
Stewart Udall, to announce that the
Department of the Interior (DOI) would proceed with its
Earth-observing satellite program. This savvy political stunt coerced NASA into expediting the building of Landsat. However, budgetary constraints and sensor disagreements between application agencies (notably the
Department of Agriculture and DOI) again stymied the satellite construction process. Finally, by 1970, NASA had a green light to build a satellite. Remarkably, Landsat 1 was launched within only two years, heralding a new age of remote sensing of land from space. The
Hughes Aircraft Company from the Santa Barbara Research Center initiated, designed, and fabricated the first three
Multispectral Scanners (MSS) in 1969. The first MSS prototype, designed by
Virginia Norwood, was completed within nine months, in the fall of 1970. It was tested by scanning
Half Dome at
Yosemite National Park. Norwood was called "The Mother of Landsat" for this design work. Working at NASA's
Goddard Space Flight Center,
Valerie L. Thomas managed the development of early Landsat image processing software systems and became the resident expert on the Computer Compatible Tapes, or CCTs, that were used to store early Landsat imagery. Thomas was one of the image processing specialists who facilitated the ambitious 'Large Area Crop Inventory Experiment', known as LACIE — a project that showed for the first time that global
crop monitoring could be done through remote sensing with Landsat satellite imagery. The program was initially called the Earth Resources Technology Satellites Program, which was used from 1966 to 1975. In 1975, the name was changed to Landsat. In 1979,
Jimmy Carter's Presidential Directive 54 transferred Landsat operations from
NASA to the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), recommended development of a long-term operational system with four additional satellites beyond Landsat 3, and recommended transition to private sector operation of Landsat. This occurred in 1985 when the
Earth Observation Satellite Company (
EOSAT), a partnership of
Hughes Aircraft Company and
RCA, was selected by NOAA to operate the Landsat system with a ten-year contract. EOSAT operated Landsat 4 and Landsat 5, had exclusive rights to market Landsat data, and was to build Landsats 6 and 7. In 1989, this transition had not been fully completed when NOAA's funding for the Landsat program was due to run out (NOAA had not requested any funding, and the
U.S. Congress had appropriated only six months of funding for the fiscal year), and NOAA directed that Landsat 4 and Landsat 5 be shut down. The head of the newly formed
National Space Council, Vice President
Dan Quayle, noted the situation and arranged emergency funding that allowed the program to continue with the data archives intact. Again in 1990 and 1991, Congress provided only half of the year's funding to NOAA, requesting that agencies that used Landsat data provide the funding for the other six months of the upcoming year. In 1992, various efforts were made to procure funding for follow-on Landsats and continued operations, but by the end of the year, EOSAT ceased processing Landsat data. Landsat 6 was finally launched on 5 October 1993, but was lost in a launch failure. Processing of Landsat 4 and 5 data was resumed by EOSAT in 1994. NASA finally launched Landsat 7 on 15 April 1999. Congress recognized the value of the Landsat program in October 1992 when it passed the Land Remote Sensing Policy Act (Public Law 102-555), authorizing the procurement of Landsat 7 and assuring the continued availability of Landsat digital data and images, at the lowest possible cost, to traditional and new users of the data. By the turn of the century, the emergence of a viable U.S. commercial remote sensing industry, newly stabilized by its support to the national intelligence community, raised questions about the continued viability of a publicly managed land remote sensing satellite system. As a result, White House plans shifted to possible adoption of an MSS-like instrument onboard the NPOESS platform and, concurrently, cancellation of future Landsat satellites by the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy. These actions were subsequently cancelled by OSTP and the White House, causing the production of a new, national policy for Land Remote Sensing. The OSTP Plan for a National Land Imaging Program was published in 2007 following Landsat 8 re-authorization. Subsequently, the Landsat satellite system was recognized as foundational to U.S. space, earth observation, and geospatial management and policy. == Satellite chronology ==