Slashgeo

Last week ago we told you about Landsat-5 problems, Very Spatial links to a NASA update on the Landsat Data Continuity Mission. This topic was discussed a few times before (see previous stories below). The article's introduction: "In a world newly awash with geospatial information, only Landsat offers a rich archive of global mid-resolution, highly calibrated, multispectral data of Earth’s landmasses. To extend this legacy, plans are in the works for a July 2011 launch of the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM), which will collect and archive data consistent with its predecessor Landsat satellites. This July, NASA selected Ball Aerospace and Technology Corporation to build LDCM’s Operational Land Imager (OLI) instrument, bringing the long-awaited Landsat follow-on mission closer to actualization."

VerySpatial informs us that despite several recent troubles, Landsat-5 is resuming operations. Last October troubles have been circumvented but the need for a Landsat Data Continuity Mission is obviously still relevant. From the USGS announcement: "The USGS is pleased to announce that Landsat 5 resumed imaging on January 10, 2008. Landsat 5 imaging was suspended on October 6, 2007 due to a battery cell failure with one of its two working batteries. [...] In November 2005, Landsat 5 transitioned to operations using a fixed solar array due to a failed motor which reduces the efficiency of battery charging. This, combined with the reduced power available from the batteries, increases the complexity of maintaining a safe power balance while collecting imagery. Over the next few weeks, the team will continue to increase collection of imagery while closely monitoring power. Data collected will be available soon following analysis and calibration of the data."

Very Spatial informs us of the USGS plans to make available at no charge the whole Landsat archives within a year. Additionally, Directions Mag runs an article on satellite imagery growth, specifically on land cover products for local governments. From the article: "I, for one, am excited to see innovative, value-added processing of satellite imagery. The little bursts seen in recent years seem to come and go quickly. Perhaps we've turned a corner and this will be the first of many data layers regularly extracted from the terabytes of high-resolution satellite imagery data available worldwide and turned into products for immediate use in the public and private sector." Browse our Land Cover topic for more. Update: 04/29 20:45 GMT by S : The EOPortal informs us NASA has selected the contractor for the Landsat Data Continuity Mission Spacecraft.

An article in TerraGIS is describing a low budget mapping application of the Obama for America Campaign made with OSGeo tools. "The goal was to support the field work of organizers in up to 20 Battleground States, and to scale the application vertically in case that would become necessary. The EC2 server was running on an Ubuntu operating system, Apache 2 HTTP Server, PHP server side scripting, PostGIS spatial database, OpenLayers as a map viewer and UMN MapServer in CGI mode as the map rendering engine." See this article for more info: http://www.terragis.net/2008/11/24/obama-campaign-mapping-voters-with-mapserver-postgis-and-openlayers/

Announced last April, it seems the full Landsat data archive is now available online. From VS: "We touched on the fact that Landsat 7 was freely available a while back, however you can now access the full 35+ years of Landsat 1 through 7. To access this data head over to the USGS Global Visualization Viewer (GloVis) or the EarthExplorer. If nothing else, the USGS just made remote sensing class projects so much easier."

If you do a "Obama" search on the geoblogs using "Search geospatial blogs" text box on the upper left side of Slashgeo's page, you'll find a lot of Obama inauguration entries. To get you started, there's three entries on the Google Lat Long blog: Inaugural mashups, Virtually experience the Inauguration and Helpful maps for the Inauguration. Some related stories below.

Very Spatial reminds us that Landsat-5 is now 25 years old. From the NASA: "Still observing the Earth after 25 years—22 beyond its three-year primary mission lifetime—Landsat 5 collects valuable scientific data daily. Some attribute the satellite's longevity to over-engineering. Others say it's a long run of good luck. Whatever the reason, no one who attended the satellite's March 1984 launch could have expected it would still be working today." See also related stories below.

Susan Maxwell writes "Hello All, We have finished development of the software to fill Landsat ETM+ SLC-off image gaps (using the segment-based approach). The software will be placed on sourceforge.net within the next few days under the project name of "Landsat ETM+ SLC-off Gapfill". The program is written in C, runs on Unix/Linux, and is initiated using a GUI. We hope to make a Windows version available in the future. There are 2 inputs to the program. The first is the Landsat SLC-off image that is to be filled. The image should be in geotiff format, UTM projection, 30m resolution, and have each band in a separate file. If you download them from Glovis or EarthExplorer, untar and uncompress them to a directory, they will be in the correct format for the software. The second input required is the "segment model" for the specific path/row of the scene you are filling. The segment model consists of 3 files referred to as the "segment maps". They were specifically created for each Landsat path/row from SLC-on imagery. You will need to download these files from our FTP site prior to running the software. We are uploading these now but it is taking longer than we anticipated. I would like to find out which Landsat path(s) and row(s) you are interested in testing now so that we can make sure these are available for you. I only need the path/row numbers (e.g., 45/32 for path 45 row 32)... not any specific date. I will be sending out a separate notice later this week when the software and segment maps are ready for download. Thanks, Susan" See also related stories below.