With the end of the current Landsat 5 and Landsat 7 missions, NASA will soon launch the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) or the Landsat 8 mission. I am pretty excited on this as I have been using Landsat datasets in my remote sensing research! For those interested of the LDCM Landsat 8 band locations and specifications, I posted the details below as released by USGS.
Landsat 8 Number of Bands and Locations
Nine spectral bands, including a pan band:
Band 1 Visible (0.433 – 0.453 µm) 30 m
Band 2 Visible (0.450 – 0.515 µm) 30 m
Band 3 Visible (0.525 – 0.600 µm) 30 m
Band 4 Near-Infrared (0.630 – 0.680 µm) 30 m
Band 5 Near-Infrared (0.845 – 0.885 µm) 30 m
Band 6 SWIR 1(1.560 – 1.660 µm) 30 m
Band 7 SWIR 2 (2.100 – 2.300 µm) 30 m
Band 8 Panchromatic (PAN) (0.500 – 0.680 µm) 15 m
Band 9 Cirrus (1.360 – 1.390 µm) 30 m
Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS)
Two spectral bands:
Band 10 TIRS 1 (10.3 – 11.3 µm) 100 m
Band 11 TIRS 2 (11.5 – 12.5 µm) 100 m
Other Characteristics
Scene size: 170 km x 185 km (106 mi x 115 mi)
Design Life: Minimum of 5 years
Orbit
Worldwide Reference System-2 (WRS-2) path/row system
Sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 705 km (438 mi)
233 orbit cycle; covers the entire globe every 16 days (except for the highest polar latitudes)
Inclined 98.2° (slightly retrograde)
Circles the Earth every 98.9 minutes
Equatorial crossing time: 10:00 a.m. +/- 15 minutes
Projected launching date for Landsat 8 is February 11, 2013 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.
